Leonard Edward Read > Quotes

“The lesson I have to teach is this: Leave all creative energies uninhibited. Merely organize society to act in harmony with this lesson. Let society's legal apparatus remove all obstacles the best it can. Permit these creative know-hows freely to flow. Have faith that free men and women will respond to the Invisible Hand. This faith will be confirmed. I, Pencil, seemingly simple though I am, offer the miracle of my creation as testimony that this is a practical faith, as practical as the sun, the rain, a cedar tree, the good earth.”
― Leonard E. Read, I, Pencil: My Family Tree As Told to Leonard E. Read

“MY THESIS, in simplest terms, is: Let anyone do anything he pleases, so long as it is peaceful; the role of government, then, is to keep the peace...Keeping the peace means no more than prohibiting persons from unpeaceful actions...When government goes beyond this, that is, when government prohibits peaceful actions, such prohibitions themselves are, prima facie, unpeaceful.”
― Leonard E. Read, Anything That's Peaceful

“Under our form of government we count, we do not weigh, opinion. The fact, therefore, that a certain sound principle may long be recognized as such by an economic-informed few is of little consequence. If the majority is wrong in its thinking, then the direction of the whole is more than likely to be equally wrong.”
― Leonard Read, The Collected Works of Leonard E. Read

“Certainly, the voice of the demagogue, who depends for his political ascendency upon existing discontent, or discontent he can create, has reached the ears of millions through the radio. In pre-radio days that type of person got little more than soapbox hearing, principally because he, with his nitwit ideas could never make enough money to get himself beyond city parks. In those days the man who couldn’t look after himself had little chance of promising many others how well he could look after them. But today, if he doesn’t get free time on the air, his followers will ante enough two-bit pieces to assure the American public of his Messianic message”
― Leonard Read, The Collected Works of Leonard E. Read

“A good guideline to assess progress: if daily the Unknown is not looming larger, one is not growing.”
― Leonard Edward Read, The love of liberty

“The Negro slave, for instance, if asked to list the restraints exercised over him would have had little to offer. He could not clearly define and describe a status unknown to him. A relatively free American, after having experienced a fair measure of liberty, and then suddenly put in the same bondage as the Negro slave, would have been better able to differentiate between his new slave status and the freedom he had earlier known. But many present-day Americans, when asked the question “What liberties have you lost?” are stumped for an answer. A creeping slavery progressively removes the contrasting experience that would give the basis for a full answer. They cannot, any more than the slave, discriminate between what is and what might have been in the area of the personally unknown. No better testimony of this point is required than the common reaction when anyone raises any question about the long-established public education system. It has become so much a part of the mores, so sanctified by years of acceptance and tradition, that any alternative to “education” under the principles of violence is quite beyond comprehension.”
― Leonard Edward Read, The Collected Works of Leonard E. Read

“When devotees of the free market, private ownership, limited government way of life are chosen as teachers, let orientation be the teachers’ aim. Yes, give some samplings of the few lessons well mastered, point out the lodestar—the ideal—and let the seekers take it from there. The School of Mankind has given me two reasons for this conclusion. First, there is no teacher among all who live who knows all the explanations—even remotely. And, second, only the seekers can find their way. No individual can do it for you or me or anyone else. Each, by the very nature of man, is his own trail blazer.

The School of Mankind! It issues no degrees; there is no tenure. Students and teachers leap-frog one another as they advance. No graduation, only daily commencements! And no semesters or set term of years! The School of Mankind is for life—the good life!”
― Leonard Edward Read, The love of liberty

“Half the world’s rubber. c. Three-fourths the world’s silk. d. One-third the world’s coal. e. Two-thirds the world’s crude oil. Is it not possible that there is some factor in our system that is responsible for this approach to a national plenty? Perhaps we think it is one thing when it really is something none of us identify. What is this “X” factor, this mystery factor? Is not a search for it advisable?”
― Leonard Read, The Collected Works of Leonard E. Read

“For, the wise G. K. Chesterton observed, “We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders.”
― Leonard E. Read, I, Pencil: My Family Tree As Told to Leonard E. Read

“You have put to words what I have always believed.” The magnification of one’s own tiny light is the cause of this; hero worship is the temporary consequence.”
― Leonard Edward Read, The Collected Works of Leonard E. Read