Source: The God of the Machine (1943), p. 122
Isabel Paterson:
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Famous Isabel Paterson Quotes
“A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state.”
Source: The God of the Machine (1943), p. 258
“The only way to prevent prostitution altogether would be to imprison one half of the human race.”
Source: The God of the Machine (1943), p. 93
“Whether it does any good or not, a law enforced must hurt someone.”
Source: The God of the Machine (1943), p. 92
“An army is a diversion of energy from the productive life of a nation.”
Source: The God of the Machine (1943), p. 30
Source: The God of the Machine (1943), p. 39
Isabel Paterson Quotes
Source: The God of the Machine (1943), p. 62
Context: 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.
Source: The God of the Machine (1943), p. 69
Context: Men are born free, that since they begin with no government, they must therefore institute government by voluntary agreement, and thus government must be their agent, not their superior. Since volition is a function of the individual, the individual has the precedent right. Then even if it was presumed that government did equate roughly with the moral shorcomings of humanity, it should still be limited and subsidiary. If everyone were invariably honest, able, wise, and kind, there should be no occasion for government. Everyone would readily understand what is desirable and what is possible in given circumstances, all would concur upon the best means toward their purpose and for equitable participation in the ensuing benefits, and would act without compulsion or default. The maximum production was certainly obtained from such voluntary action arising from personal initiative. But since human beings will sometimes lie, shirk, break promises, fail to improve their faculties, act imprudently, seize by violence the goods of others, and even kill one another in anger or greed, the government might be defined as the police organization. In that case, it must be described as a necessary evil. It would have no existence as a separate entity, and no intrinsic authority; it could not be justly empowered to act excepting as individuals infringed one another's rights, when it should enforce prescribed penalties. Generally, it would stand in the relation of a witness to contract, holding a forfeit for the parties. As such, the least practicable measure of government must be the best. Anything beyond the minimum must be oppression.
Source: The God of the Machine (1943), p. 250, emphasis in the original
Source: The God of the Machine (1943), p. 13
“In human affairs, all that endures is what men think.”
Source: The God of the Machine (1943), p. 15
Source: The God of the Machine (1943), p. 32
Source: The God of the Machine (1943), p. 292
“The humanitarian in theory is the terrorist in action.”
Source: The God of the Machine (1943), p. 242
Source: The God of the Machine (1943), p. 255
