Beeblehead

The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all, it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.

Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping, and unintelligent.

The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the Salvation Army, by running flop-houses and disturbing the peace.

The ideal Government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone - one which barely escapes being no government at all.

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable …

It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law … that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed - and hence clamorous to be led to safety - by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects … what they thus lost they have never got back.

We suffer most when the White House busts with ideas.

On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.

The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it’s good-by to the Bill of Rights.

There is always an easy solution to every human problem – neat, plausible and wrong.

I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman’s club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave.

The average man doesn’t want to be free. He simply wants to be safe.

The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic.

Most people want security in this world, not liberty.

The fact is that the average man’s love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth. Liberty is not a thing for the great masses of men. It is the exclusive possession of a small and disreputable minority, like knowledge, courage and honor. It takes a special sort of man to understand and enjoy liberty - and he is usually an outlaw in democratic societies.

Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.

I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.

Education in the truest sense - education directed toward awakening a capacity to differentiate between fact and appearance -always will be a more or less furtive and illicit thing, for its chief purpose is the controversion and destruction of the very ideas that the majority of men - and particularly the majority of official and powerful men - regard as incontrovertibly true. To the extent that I am genuinely educated, I am suspicious of all the things that the average citizen believes and the average pedagogue teaches. Progress consists entirely of attacking and disposing of these ordinary beliefs.

If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.

Whenever ‘A’ attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon 'B’, 'A’ is most likely a scoundrel.

The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.

When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that the old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had one before.

All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him.

Democracy, too, is a religion. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses.

Traditional education rankings, such as those published by U.S. News & World Report, while well-intentioned, are unreliable and misleading…

Traditional education rankings rankings fail to provide “apples to apples" comparisons among states. By treating states as though they had identical students, they ignore the substantial variation present in student populations across states. Conventional rankings also include inappropriate or irrelevant data to the educational performance of schools, such as raw spending per pupil, graduation rates, and pre-K enrollment.  To better measure educational outcomes, Stan J. Liebowitz, Cato adjunct scholar and Ashbel Smith Professor of Economics at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) with Matthew L. Kelly, a graduate student at UTD, compare state test scores for each of three subjects (math, reading, and science), four major ethnic groups (whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asian/Pacific Islanders) and two grades (fourth and eighth), for a total of 24 potential observations in each state and the District of Columbia. They give each of the 24 tests equal weight and base their ranking on the average of the test scores. After adjusting for the heterogeneity of students, states in New England and the Upper Midwest who typically perform favorably fall in the rankings, whereas many states in the South and Southwest score much higher than they do in conventional reports.  The authors also produce rankings that, unlike most conventional reports, consider states’ cost-effectiveness of education spending. Florida, Texas, and Virginia are the most efficient in terms of quality achieved per cost of living-adjusted dollar spent. Conversely, West Virginia, Alabama, and Maine are the least efficient. Some states, such as Massachusetts and New Jersey, do an excellent job educating students but also spend quite lavishly and thus fall considerably when spending efficiency is considered. 

While the authors observe a positive relationship between spending and achievement using nominal dollars, it disappears when state-level cost of living adjustments are made. This does not necessarily imply that spending overall has no effect on outcome, but merely that most states have reached a sufficient level of spending such that additional spending does not appear to be related to achievement as measured by these test scores.

The authors also briefly examine additional factors that affect student performance. They find states with stronger unions tend to get worse academic outcomes. Unions are negatively related to student performance, presumably through opposing the removal of underperforming teachers, opposing merit-based pay, or because of union work rules. Additionally, the authors’ results indicate that having a greater share of students in charter schools is positively related to student achievement. Although this study constitutes a significant improvement on leading state education rankings, it retains some limitations. There exists substantial variation in education quality within states and disagreement about desired educational outcomes. However, state-level rankings do provide an intuitively pleasing basis for lawmakers and interested citizens to compare state education policies. The authors’ main goal is to provide rankings that more accurately reflect the learning that is taking place by focusing only on academic achievement and disaggregating scores, rather than scoring inputs and state-wide test scores.

Source: [x]

The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all, it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.

Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping, and unintelligent.

The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the Salvation Army, by running flop-houses and disturbing the peace.

The ideal Government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone - one which barely escapes being no government at all.

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable …

It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law … that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed - and hence clamorous to be led to safety - by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects … what they thus lost they have never got back.

We suffer most when the White House busts with ideas.

On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.

The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it’s good-by to the Bill of Rights.

There is always an easy solution to every human problem – neat, plausible and wrong.

I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman’s club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave.

The average man doesn’t want to be free. He simply wants to be safe.

The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic.

Most people want security in this world, not liberty.

The fact is that the average man’s love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth. Liberty is not a thing for the great masses of men. It is the exclusive possession of a small and disreputable minority, like knowledge, courage and honor. It takes a special sort of man to understand and enjoy liberty - and he is usually an outlaw in democratic societies.

Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.

I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.

Education in the truest sense - education directed toward awakening a capacity to differentiate between fact and appearance -always will be a more or less furtive and illicit thing, for its chief purpose is the controversion and destruction of the very ideas that the majority of men - and particularly the majority of official and powerful men - regard as incontrovertibly true. To the extent that I am genuinely educated, I am suspicious of all the things that the average citizen believes and the average pedagogue teaches. Progress consists entirely of attacking and disposing of these ordinary beliefs.

If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.

Whenever ‘A’ attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon 'B’, 'A’ is most likely a scoundrel.

The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.

When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that the old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had one before.

All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him.

Democracy, too, is a religion. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses.

The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.

There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.

The whole principle [of censorship] is wrong. It’s like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can’t have steak.

There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.

The greatest productive force is human selfishness.

Sin lies only in hurting others unnecessarily. All other “sins” are invented nonsense.

An armed society is a polite society.

A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill.

Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors… and miss.

I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.

It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.

No statement should be believed because it is made by an authority.

A woman is not property, and husbands who think otherwise are living in a dreamworld.

When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives.

When a place gets crowded enough to require ID’s, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.

Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor.

Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy.

Progress isn’t made by early risers. It’s made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.

No amount of force can control a free man, whose mind is free. No, not the rack nor the atomic bomb, not anything. You can’t conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.

It is impossible for anyone to be responsible for another person’s behavior. The most you or any leader can do is to encourage each one to be responsible for himself.

Does history record any case in which the majority was right?

I also think there are prices too high to pay to save the United States. Conscription is one of them. Conscription is slavery, and I don’t think that any people or nation has a right to save itself at the price of slavery for anyone, no matter what name it is called. We have had the draft for twenty years now; I think this is shameful. If a country can’t save itself through the volunteer service of its own free people, then I say: Let the damned thing go down the drain!

I never do anything I don’t want to do. Nor does anyone, but in my case I am always aware of it.

Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.

Must be a yearning deep in the human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws - always for the other fellow.

The first principle of freedom is the right to go to hell in your own handbasket.

A desire not to butt into other people’s business is at least eighty percent of all human wisdom.

Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed.