Johan Norberg > Quotes

“So it was not superior thinkers, inventors or businesses that made Europe rich, but the fact that European elites were less successful in obstructing them... This is somewhat similar to our era of globalization. More countries, in more places, now have access to the sum of humanity's knowledge, and are open to the best innovations from other places... If progress is blocked in one place, many others will continue humanity's journey. (217-218)”
― Johan Norberg, Progress - Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future

“A child born today is more likely to reach retirement age than his forebears were to live to their fifth birthday.”
― Johan Nordberg, Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future

“Despite what we hear on the news and from many authorities, the great story of our era is that we are witnessing the greatest improvement in global living standards ever to take place. Poverty,”
― Johan Nordberg, Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future

“Hard times create strongmen, and strongmen create even harder times.”
― Johan Norberg, Peak Human: What We Can Learn from the Rise and Fall of Golden Ages

“Do we not see that noble cities are erected by the people and destroyed by the princes? That a state grows rich by the industry of its citizens and is plundered by the rapacity of its rulers? That good laws are enacted by representatives of the people and violated by kings? That the commons love peace and the monarchs foment war?”
― Johan Norberg, Peak Human: What We Can Learn from the Rise and Fall of Golden Ages

“According to an ambitious attempt to measure poverty over the long run, with a $2 a day threshold for extreme poverty, adjusted for purchasing power in 1985, ninety-four per cent of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty in 1820, eighty-two per cent in 1910 and seventy-two per cent in 1950.19 But in the last few decades things have really begun to change. Between 1981 and 2015 the proportion of low- and middle-income countries suffering from extreme poverty was reduced from fifty-four per cent to twelve per cent.”
― Johan Norberg, Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future

“In the past, the great effervescences of history -- those major episodes of openness and progress -- petered out because of what has been called Cardwell's Law, after the technology historian Donald S. Cardwell. Innovation always faces resistance from groups that think they stand to lose from it, be they old political or religious elites, businesses with old technologies, workers with outmoded skills, nostalgic romantics, or old folks who feel anxious because people just don't do things the way they used to.”
― Johan Norberg, Open: The Story of Human Progress

“countries with freer markets have faster growth, better wages, greater poverty reduction, more investment, less corruption, higher subjective well-being and are more democratic, with greater respect for human rights.29”
― Johan Norberg, The Capitalist Manifesto: Why the Global Free Market Will Save the World

“Those of us who are privileged to live in affluent countries have grown appreciably richer in the past few decades. So too have the Third World rich. But the second half is, quite simply, wrong. The poor have not, generally speaking, come to be worse off in recent decades. On the contrary, absolute poverty has diminished, and where it was quantitatively greatest—in Asia—many hundreds of millions of people who barely twenty years ago were struggling to make ends meet have begun to achieve a secure existence and even a modest degree of affluence.”
― Johan Norberg, In Defense of Global Capitalism

“Det fria samhället bygger på att vi på så många områden
som möjligt ersätter huggens och slagens logik med det frivilliga handslagets logik. Att vi inte förbjuder, tvingar och kommenderar, utan att vi frågar, erbjuder och förhandlar.”
― Johan Norberg, Det kapitalistiska manifestet

“So it seems that the only way for terrorists to win is if its victims overreact, dismantle civil liberties and blame whole groups for the actions of a few. Doing so stirs up the very conflicts that the terrorists seek and makes it easier to recruit terrorists and continue the battle (103).”
― Johan Norberg, Progress - Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future

“There are no free lunches, and wealth has to be created before it can be distributed.”
― Johan Norberg, The Capitalist Manifesto

“Samtidigt kan liberaliseringen av uppfostran slå över i rädsla för att lära ut normer, regler och begrepp som rätt och fel. Detta kan också vara destruktivt, även för den mentala utvecklingen, då det inte finns något för barnen att upptäcka, ingen moral att utforska och förstå.”
― Johan Norberg, Hjärnrevolutionen - Varför din intelligens påverkar allt du gör

“It’s not that the means corrupt the ends. It’s that the ends never work, and that’s why they need brutal means.”
― Johan Norberg

“Capitalism is merciless against capitalists who do not deliver.”
― Johan Norberg, The Capitalist Manifesto: Why the Global Free Market Will Save the World

“Svenska friskolor måste vara öppna för alla barn, oavsett hur begåvade de är, och därför blir det omöjligt att bygga en skola anpassad för särbegåvningar. Märkligt nog finns det undantag för barn som är särskilt duktiga på idrott och musik. ... I det egalitära Sverige har vi månad så mycket om jämlikheten att vi har struntat i att det krossar dem som inte passar in.”
― Johan Norberg, Hjärnrevolutionen - Varför din intelligens påverkar allt du gör

“wonderful paper by Jim Oeppen and James Vaupel looks at the forecasts of experts, including the United Nations and the World Bank, who have repeatedly asserted that life expectancy is approaching a ceiling. The paper concludes that those ceilings have always been broken, on average five years after the estimate was published. Oeppen and Vaupel point out that female life expectancy in the record-holding country has risen for an amazing 160 years at a steady pace of almost three months per year, and there is no end in sight. The apparent levelling off in some countries is an artefact of laggards catching up and leaders falling behind. Amazingly, there is not a single country that hasn’t seen improvements in infant and child mortality since 1950.29”
― Johan Norberg, Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future

“Kinas övergång till kapitalism var med andra ord ett resultat av gräsrötternas initiativ och mod. Det fanns ingen plan för det – allt som gjorde Kina rikt hände utanför femårsplanerna.”
― Johan Norberg, Det kapitalistiska manifestet

“I december 1994 signerade 52 intelligensforskare uppropet "Mainstream opinion on science" i Wall Street Journal, ett dokument som förklarade att forskningen står bakom många av påståendena i The bell curve.”
― Johan Norberg, Hjärnrevolutionen - Varför din intelligens påverkar allt du gör

“Mycket av vetenskapshistorien har handlat om att visa att människan inte är så speciell. ... Men vår hjärna gör oss rätt speciella ändå ...”
― Johan Norberg, Hjärnrevolutionen - Varför din intelligens påverkar allt du gör

“When Hitler purged German universities of Jews it was like bombing his own armoury of knowledge and science. The dismissed represented not only 16 per cent of all Germany’s physicists, chemists and mathematicians, but as much as 50 per cent of all the citations to papers published before 1933. Eleven of the dismissed scholars were past or future Nobel Prize winners.44”
― Johan Norberg, Open: The Story of Human Progress

“Steven Pinker dristar sig till och med till att hävda att högre intelligens leder till mer klassiskt liberala attityder, som individualism och frihet framför tradition, auktoritet och kollektivism.”
― Johan Norberg, Hjärnrevolutionen - Varför din intelligens påverkar allt du gör

“Intelligens är kapaciteten att förvärva kapacitet.”
― Johan Norberg, Hjärnrevolutionen - Varför din intelligens påverkar allt du gör

“Tålamod är en av de viktigaste dygderna.”
― Johan Norberg, Hjärnrevolutionen - Varför din intelligens påverkar allt du gör

“Evolutionspsykologen Steven Pinker menar att människan ungefär samtidigt, kanske för ett par hundra tusen år sedan, på allvar började utveckla de tre egenskaperna som bidrog till denna kognitiva nisch: intelligens, samarbete och språk. Det var dessa tre egenskaper som förstärkte och ökade värdet av varandra, och skapade den moderna människan och det moderna samhället.”
― Johan Norberg, Hjärnrevolutionen - Varför din intelligens påverkar allt du gör

“Where people are given a little bit of freedom, they begin to develop their countries and make great progress. The unequal distribution in the world is due to the uneven distribution of capitalism: people who have it become rich; those who do not have it stay poor.”
― Johan Norberg, The Capitalist Manifesto: Why the Global Free Market Will Save the World

“Inom några decennier kommer minnesproblem och hjärnsjukdomar kunna vara minnen blott. Blinda kommer att se, döva att höra och förlamade att gå.”
― Johan Norberg, Hjärnrevolutionen - Varför din intelligens påverkar allt du gör