When I read a book, I underline parts that I find important. I have been doing that for many years. Each book note below is the digital version of those underlined parts. Some notes contain thoughts or links to relative notes. I clearly mark those, so that they are not confused with the excerpts from the book:
You can search books by author or by tag. More book notes are coming soon. Use RSS for notificatins.
Published in 1888. “This work of not even 150 pages, cheerful and fateful in tone, a demon that laughs—the product of so few days that I hesitate to say how many—is the absolute exception among books: there is nothing richer in substance, more independent, more subversive—more wicked. Anyone who wants to get a quick idea of how topsy-turvy everything was before I came along should make a start with this work. What the title-page calls idol is quite simply what till now has been called truth. Twilight of the Idols—in plain words: the old truth is coming to an end.” (Nietzsche)
Published in 2008. “Like many of my colleagues, I felt that I could easily have been the Unabomber’s next target. He is clearly a Luddite, but simply saying this does not dismiss his argument…. As difficult as it is for me to acknowledge, I saw some merit in the reasoning in [Kaczynski’s writing]. I started showing friends the Kaczynski quote from Ray Kurzweil’s The Age of Spiritual Machines; I would hand them Kurzweil’s book, let them read the quote, and then watch their reaction as they discovered who had written it.” (Bill Joy, founder of Sun Microsystems)
Опубл. 1874. “Яркая и почти болезненно талантливая история несчастного князя Мышкина, неистового Парфена Рогожина и отчаявшейся Настасьи Филипповны, много раз экранизированная и поставленная на сцене, и сейчас завораживает читателя…”
Key ideas: Published in 2007. "Instantly named Freedom Book of The Month and a major influence in the Cyber-underground, A Lodging of Wayfaring Men is the story of freedom-seekers who create an alternative society on the Internet - a virtual society, with no possibility of oversight or control. It grows so fast that governments and "leaders" are terrified, and fight to co-opt this cyber-society before it undermines the power of the governing elite."
Published in 1851. “Men of learning are those who have read the contents of books. Thinkers, geniuses, and those who have enlightened the world and furthered the race of men, are those who have made direct use of the book of the world.” (A. Schopenhauer)
Published in 1851. “Remember rather that the man who writes for fools always finds a large public: and only read for a limited and definite time exclusively the works of great minds, those who surpass other men of all times and countries, and whom the voice of fame points to as such. These alone really educate and instruct. One can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books: bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind.” (Schopenhuer)
Published in 1910. “The Yap Islanders regarded stones quarried and shaped on a distant island and brought to their own as the concrete manifestation of wealth. For a century and more, the “civilized” world regarded as a concrete manifestation of its wealth metal dug from deep in the ground, refined at great labor, and transported great distances to be buried again in elaborate vaults deep in the ground. Is the one practice really more rational than the other?” (Milton Friedman)
Published in 1849. “I heartily accept the motto—“That government is best which governs least;” and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe—“That government is best which governs not at all;” and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.” (H. Thoreau)
“The Apology purports to give us a version of what Socrates said in court when facing a pubhc prosecution for impiety on the grounds that he was faihng to acknowledge the city’s gods, introducing new divinities, and corrupting the youth. It gives his main defence speech, his epitimesis (estimation of the correct penalty) and his final address to the jurors after condemnation to death.” (from Introduction)
University of Edinburgh research paper by prof. Kenneth G. C. Reid, published in 2014. “The first banknotes in Scotland were issued in 1695 following the incorporation of the Bank of Scotland… In 1749 the case of Crawfurd v The Royal Bank considered, and settled, one of the key legal issues: whether the holder of a banknote took free from infirmities of title which affected those from whom it had been acquired.” (K. Reid)
Published in 1908. A paper read before the american philosophical society. “Among the most certain laws known to economic science is the one that, when two moneys of unequal value are placed in circulation at the same time side by side as currency of the realm, the poorer or cheaper will drive the better or dearer from circulation” (T. Balch)
Published in 2004. "If anything, I attempt to persuade the reader that looking to political action to make improvements in American society reflects a misplaced faith in the political process, a faith sometimes spawned by the modern idealization of democracy. Seeking to improve society through politics reinforces the view that the solutions to human problems are usually political and thus fosters a belief that politics should play a central role in our lives. It is this kind of thinking that I seek to address. So if this work is to be associated with a call for any partic- ular action, that action must begin with changing individuals’ minds." (L. Samons)
Published in 1976 by a professor of economic history at the University of California, Berkeley. In this thought-provoking essay, Capolla outlined the five basic laws of human stupidity. The first law asserted that “Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of of stupid individuals in circulations.” Had Cipolla lived through the covid hysteria of 2020-22, he would have had to admit that even he had greatly underestimated the number of stupid individuals in circulation. But that, of course, would have only confirmed his first basic law.
Published in 1943. "It was written in 1942 and its importance has grown year by year to the point that no student of the liberal society can afford not to read and master this treatise. It is most famous for its prediction that capitalism is unsustainable not because it is a flawed system but rather because voters and bureaucrats in an otherwise free society will fail to protect capitalism from its enemies [intellectuals and others]" (from the Introduction)
Published in 1952. "According to the Chodorov rationale, all the great political movements of modern times are slave philosophies. For, no matter whether they speak in the name of communism, socialism, fascism, New Dealism or the Welfare (sometimes called the Positive) State, the modern political philosophers are all alike in advocating the forcible seizure of bigger and bigger proportions of the individual’s energy. It matters not a whit whether the coercion is done by club or the tax agent—the coercion of labor is there; and such coercion is a definition of slavery." (John Chamberlain)
"It never occurred to me that there might be disadvantages in being educated… Education deprives a young person of one of his most precious possessions, the sense of cooperation with his fellows, because his fellows, today, are turning all their energy into a single narrow channel of interest; they have set the whole current of their being in one direction. Education is all against his doing that, while training is all for it; hence training puts him in step with his fellows while education tends to leave him a solitary figure." (A. Nock)
Published in 1927. "The State did not originate in any form of social agreement, or with any disinterested view of promoting order and justice. Far otherwise. The State originated in conquest and confiscation, as a device for maintaining the stratification of society permanently into two classes—an owning and exploiting class, relatively small, and a propertyless dependent class" (A. Nock)
Published in 1970. "The comprachicos traded in children. They bought them and sold them... And what did they make of these children? Monsters. Why monsters? To laugh.... Victor Hugo wrote this in the nineteenth century. His exalted mind could not conceive that so unspeakable a form of inhumanity would ever be possible again. The twentieth century proved him wrong... To make you unconscious for life by means of your own brain, nothing can be more ingenious. This is the ingenuity practiced by most of today’s educators." (Ayn Rand)
Gold and Economic Freedom by Alan Greenspan was published in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, ed. Ayn Rand (1966). Greenspan wrote this essay before he was appointed as Chairman of the Federal Reserve System.
Published in 2023. "This thesis introduces a novel theoretical framework for analyzing the potential national strategic impact of Bitcoin as an electro-cyber security technology rather than a peer-to-peer cash system. The goal of this thesis is to give the research community a different frame of reference they can utilize to generate hypotheses and deductively analyze the potential risks and rewards of proof-of-work technologies as something other than strictly monetary technology." (J. Lowery)
Published in 1936. "So long as the masses are taking up the tabernacle of Moloch and Chiun, their images, and following the star of their god Buncombe, they will have no lack of prophets to point the way that leadeth to the More Abundant Life; and hence a few of those who feel the prophetic afflatus might do better to apply themselves to serving the Remnant. It is a good job, an interesting job, much more interesting than serving the masses; and moreover it is the only job in our whole civilization, as far as I know, that offers a virgin field." (A. Nock)
Written in 1552-53. "The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude is lucidly and coherently structured around a single axiom, a single percipient insight into the nature not only of tyranny, but implicitly of the State apparatus itself. Many medieval writers had attacked tyranny, but La Boétie delves especially deeply into its nature, and into the nature of State rule itself. This fundamental insight was that every tyranny must necessarily be grounded upon general popular acceptance. In short, the bulk of the people themselves, for whatever reason, acquiesce in their own subjection.... This, then, becomes for La Boétie the central problem of political theory: why in the world do people consent to their own enslavement?" (M. Rothbard)
Год выступления 2013. Выступление писателя-диссидента Владимира Буковского перед читателемя в Болгарии, посвящённое критике идеологии "политкорректности"... "Был такой философ - Герберт Маркузе, ревизионист-марксист. Он был несогласен с Марксом в одной точке: Маркс считал революционным классом пролетариат (что очевидно не так), а Маркузе учил, что истинный революционный класс - разнообразные меньшинства." (В. Буковский)
Год изд. 1918. Действие происходит в 1918 году. О России, Русской церкви, революции, интеллигенции и русском народе ведут беседу Общественный деятель, Генерал, дипломат, известный Писатель, Светский богослов и Беженец.
Год изд. 1947. "Революцию я пережил трагически, как гибель того, что было для меня самым дорогим, сладким, радостным в русской жизни, как гибель любви. Да, для меня революция именно и была катастрофой любви, унесшей из мира ее предмет и опустошившей душу, ограбившей ее" (С. Булгаков)
Год изд. 1866. "Может ли необыкновенный человек, призванный послужить человечеству, убить самое ничтожное и самое безобразное человеческое существо, отвратительную старушонку-процентщицу, которая ничего, кроме зла, не причиняет людям, для того чтобы этим открыть себе путь в будущем к облагодетельствованию человечества. Дозволено ли это?... И вот с поразительной силой обнаруживается в «Преступлении и наказании», что это не дозволено, что такой человек духовно убивает себя." (Н. Бердяев)
Published in 2003. "It may surprise you to learn that most of the great political debates of our time – at least in the Western world – can be divided into just two viewpoints. All of the rest is fluff.... It is a contest between the ethics of collectivism on the one hand and individualism on the other." (E. Griffin)
Published in 2005. "For the first time ever, the wit and wisdom of Charlie Munger is available in a single volume: all his talks, lectures and public commentary." (From the Foreword to Poor Charlie's Almanack)
Год издания 1995. «Говоря о причинах, мы, очевидно, должны иметь в виду залегающие обстоятельства – глубокие по природе, длительные во времени, которые сделали переворот принципиально осуществимым, а не толчки, непосредственно поведшие к перевороту. Толчки могут разрушить только нестабильную систему. А – отчего она стала нестабильной?» На этот вопрос Солженицын отвечает в "Размышлениях".
Год издания 1993. "'Красное Колесо' – это повествование о революции в России. Как бы движение России в революционном вихре. Это очень большой материал ... он растягивается на годы... Я выбираю малые отрезки времени, по две недели, по три, где – или происходят самые яркие действия, или закладываются решающие причины событий. И я описываю подробно только вот эти маленькие отрезки. Это и есть Узлы. Так, по узловым точкам, я как бы всю форму движения, всю форму этой сложной кривой передаю. " (А. Солженицын)"
Год 1928. "Пьеса Н.Р.Эрдмана Самоубийца, признанный шедевр отечественной драматургии. Эту пьесу мечтал поставить Станиславский, с восторгом восклицавший во время чтения комедии, что ее автор – гений! В своей лучшей пьесе Эрдман выявлял абсурд советской действительности, о которой один из персонажей говорил: «В настоящее время, гражданин Подсекальников, то, что может подумать живой, может высказать только мертвый»."
Год 1974. "Так, никогда не получив четкого определения интеллигенции, мы как будто и перестали нуждаться в нем. Под этим словом понимается в нашей стране теперь весь образованный слой, все, кто получил образование выше семи классов школы. По словарю Даля образовать в отличие от просвещать означает: придать лиш наружный лоск. Хотя и этот лоск у нас довольно третьего качества, в духе русского языка в верно по смыслу будет: сей образованный слой, все, что самозванно или опрометчиво зовется сейчас "интеллигенцией", называть образованщиной." (А. Солженицын)
Published in 2023. "In this book I portray the Russian tradition as a dialogue of the dead... Novelists and their characters, critics and ideologists, argue about ultimate questions that obsessed Russians and concern humanity everywhere and always...I focus not so much on how the social circumstances of the day shaped each thinker’s thought as on how the ideas of many profound thinkers confront each other in timeless debates about eternally relevant questions. After all, what makes great literature great—in fact, what makes a work literature in the first place rather than just a historical document—is its ability to transcend its immediate context." (G. Morson)
Год издания: 1998. Автобиографическое произведение Александра Солженицына. В очерках описываются события 1974—1994 годов, после высылки автора из СССР и вплоть до возвращения в Россию в 1994 году.
Год издания 1936. "«Дневник и записки» представляет ценнейший документ как по количеству фактов, существенных для понимания эпохи, так и по глубине и проникновенности их истолкования."
Год издания 1902. "В «Записках революционера», которые охватывают период с 1840 по 1890 гг., Кропоткин описывает важнейшие социальные и политические перемены в России и Европе, соединяя их с повествованием о своей полной ярких событий жизни."
Опубл. 1906. "Идея и инициатива «Вех» принадлежала московскому критику и историку литературы М. О. Гершензону. "Роковые особенности русского предреволюционного образованного слоя были основательно рассмотрены в «Вехах» — и возмущённо отвергнуты всею интеллигенцией, всеми партийными направлениями от кадетов до большевиков. Пророческая глубина «Вех» не нашла (и авторы знали, что не найдут) сочувствия читающей России, не повлияла на развитие русской ситуации, не предупредила гибельных событий." (А. И. Солженицын, Образованщина)
Опубл. в 1924 г. "Эта замечательная книга вышла в свет и хлынула, как откровение, на всю Европу, лихорадочно переводится на "большие" языки... Читал ее за полночь, задыхаясь.
О чем книга И. С. Шмелева?
О смерти русского человека и русской земли.
О смерти русских трав и зверей, русских садов и русского неба.
О смерти русского солнца.
О смерти всей вселенной, - когда умерла Россия - о мертвом солнце мертвых..." (Иван Лукаш)
Published in 1886. "Our egotisms are incessantly fighting to preserve themselves, not only from external enemies, but also from the assaults of the other and better self with which they are so uncomfortably associated. Ignorance is egotism's most effective defense against that Dr. Jekyll's in us who desires perfection; stupidity, its subtlest stratagem." (A. Huxley)
Published in 2010. "I have written this book after having researched and published on the topic of modern terrorism for 25 years. I am concerned primarily with prototypes of terrorism perpetrated by the proverbial “true believers,” portrayed by Eric Hoffer as representatives of totalitarian or proto-totalitarian, fanatic movements. These violent factions " Continue...
Написан и отпечатан летом 1869 г. "Катехизис революционера" вобрал в себя идеи не только Нечаева, но и Бакунина, и П.Н.Ткачева, которым принадлежат базовые положения "революционного макиавеллизма". В "Катехизисе" впервые в русской истории была сформулирована программа широкомасштабной террористической деятельности. Отсюда и идут корни современного терроризма.
Published in 1951. "This book concerns itself chiefly with the active, revivalist phase of mass movements. This phase is dominated by the true believer—the man of fanatical faith who is ready to sacrifice his life for a holy cause—and an attempt is made to trace his genesis and outline his nature." (E. Hoffer)
Published in 2021. "This book is about mass migration, sexual violence, and the rights of women in Europe. It is about a colossal failure of the European political establishment. And it is about solutions to the problem, fake and real."
Key ideas: Опубл. 2003. "Сегодня, похоже, все, как в одном строю - делают то, что от них требуют" Отрывок из книги Англия и Европейское Содружество (В. Буковский)
Key ideas: Published in 1985. "That one person could have so many wonderfully crazy things happen to him in one life is sometimes hard to believe. That one person could invent so much innocent mischief in one life is surely an inspiration!" (Ralph Leighton)
Key ideas: Published in 1953. "A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man's mind" (R. Bradbury)
Key ideas: Published in 1952. "‘Do thou,’ and throw their weight into obedience. And there are millions more who feel predestination in ‘Thou shalt.’ Nothing they may do can interfere with what will be. But “Thou mayest’! Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win." (J. Steinbeck, East of Eden)
Key ideas: Published in 1943. "It is not so much the course of my own destiny that I relate, but that of an entire generation, the generation of our time, which was loaded down with a burden of fate as was hardly any other in the course of history. Each one of us, even the smallest and the most insignificant, has been shaken in the depths of his being by the almost unceasing volcanic eruptions of our European earth." (S. Zweig)
Key ideas: Опубл.: 1879. "Тут на горе паслось большое стадо свиней, и они просили Его, чтобы позволил им войти в них. Он позволил им. Бесы, вышедши из человека, вошли в свиней; и бросилось стадо с крутизны в озеро и потонуло. Пастухи, увидя случившееся" Continue...
Key ideas: "This volume is made up of the Lectures delivered last year [1931] on the Page-Barbour Foundation, at the University of Virginia" (A. Nock)
Key ideas: "In 1985, following a complaint from a local reader, staff at the Public Library in Nijmegen decided to remove Charles Bukowski's book, Tales of Ordinary Madness, from their shelves whilst declaring it "very sadistic, occasionally fascist and discriminatory against certain groups (including homosexuals)." In the following weeks, a local journalist by the name of Hans van den Broek wrote to Bukowski and asked for his opinion. It soon arrived, and can be read below."
Key ideas: «Мы» на английском языке вышло в 1925 году, на русском в 1952 в Нью-Йорке. В СССР роман не печатался до 1988 года как «идеологически враждебное». «Мы» описывает общество тоталитарного контроля над личностью. Вместо имен и фамилий - буквы и номера, государство контролирует аболютно все...
Key ideas: Published in 1963. "She [Arendt] concluded that Eichmann’s inability to speak coherently in court was connected with his incapacity to think, or to think from another person’s point of view. His shallowness was by no means identical with stupidity. He personified neither hatred or madness" Continue...
Key ideas: Published in 1958. "What I propose, therefore, is very simple: it is nothing more than to think what we are doing.... "What we are doing” is indeed the central theme of this book.... Systematically, therefore, the book is limited to a discussion of labor, work, and action, which forms its three central chapters." (H. Arendt)
Key ideas: Published in 1943. Ayn Rand believed The God of the Machine was the greatest book written in the last three hundred years: "It is the first complete statement of the philosophy of individualism as a political and economic system. It is the basic document of capitalism... The God of the Machine is a document that could literally save the world..." Continue...
Key ideas: Published in 2001. "I was haunted by a question whose answer has long eluded historians. The Germans always had the lists of Jewish names. Suddenly, a squadron of grim-faced SS would burst into a city square and post a notice demanding those listed assemble the next day at the train station for deportation to the East. But how did the Nazis get the lists?" Continue
Key ideas: Published in 1943. "His stories, lessons, observations, and conclusions pack a very powerful punch, so much so that anyone who takes time to read carefully cannot but end up changed in intellectual outlook. One feels that one has been let in a private club of people who see more deeply than others. This is truly an American classic."
Key ideas: Published in 2016, The Mandibles is an economic dystopian novel. "In 2029, the United States is engaged in a bloodless world war that will wipe out the savings of millions of American families. Overnight, on the international currency exchange, the “almighty dollar” plummets in value, to be replaced by a new global currency, the “bancor.”...
Key ideas: Published in 1975. "WHEN a nation's money is no longer a source of security, and when inflation has become the concern of an entire people, it is natural to turn for information and guidance to the history of other societies who have already undergone this most tragic and upsetting of human experiences. Continute...
Published in 1958. "Brave New World Revisited, written by Huxley almost thirty years after Brave New World, was a non-fiction work in which Huxley considered whether the world had moved toward or away from his vision of the future from the 1930s. [...] He concluded that the world was becoming much more like Brave New World much faster than he thought."
Published in 1949. "You had to live --did live, from habit that became instinct - in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized."
The technology that has been built since Orwell wrote that line makes the creation of the dystopian world he described possible. The phones we carry all the time, the "smart" devices we use, things like KYC, blue checkmarks, iris scans, and other verifications and registrations - all help create the world continue...
Published in 2000. "The impetus born of the Renaissance was exhausted, and the new start made in the years just before 1914 had been cut short. Ridicule, denial, anti-art, and sensory simplicity mean that culture and society are in the decadent phase." (Jacques Barzun)
Published in 2007. “Ultimately, we need to take control over the money supply out of the hands of our governments and make the production of money again subject to the principle of free association. The first step to endorsing and promoting this strategy is to realize that governments do not—indeed cannot—fulfill any positive role whatever through the control of our money.” (Guido Hulsmann)
Published in 1856. "One might put it that our education served the function of Mr. Titbottom’s spectacles, which George William Curtis described in his exquisite little prose idyl called Prue and I. When Mr. Titbottom looked through his lenses, the appearance of the object he was looking at instantly vanished, and he saw its stark reality" (A. Nock)
Published in 2016. This book will help you understand what bad money is and why it is at the core of what is wrong with our society.
Published in 2002. "A “gold war” is an attempt by the government upon the constitutional rights of the individual. Why do governments resort to gold wars? Sometimes they want to wage shooting wars without raising taxes; at other times they want to indulge in “social engineering” through the redistribution of income. But in every instance there is one common thread: governments have correctly identified gold as the only antidote against their effort to build the Tower of Babel of irredeemable debt. (Antal E. Fekete)
Март 1982. Последняя колонка С. Довлатова в последнем номере газеты «Новый американец» "Потому что тоталитаризм — это вы. Тоталитаризм — это цензура, отсутствие гласности, монополизация рынка, шпиономания, консервативный язык, замалчивание истинного дара. Тоталитаризм — это директива, резолюция, окрик. Тоталитаризм — это чинопочитание, верноподданничество и приниженность"
March 12, 1933. The only reason I decided to include Roosevelt's speech in this list is not to show how politicians lie and manipulate, but because of the sentence Roosevelt made regarding "fiat currency." I explain the signifiance of it in my notes.
Published in 1973. The title says it all. This very important publication is out of print, however it was freely provided by Henry Mark Holzer on his site.
Key ideas: From Ayn Rand Answers: The best of her Q&A, published in 2005. Ayn Rand on altruism: "It is an unspeakable evil."
Published in 1963. "It was the concept of individual rights that had given birth to a free society. It was with the destruction of individual rights that the destruction of freedom had to begin." (Ayn Rand)
Published in 1945. "Here is an essay that sums up the insights of a lifetime. It is a template for a worldview. It is a source of unlimited amounts of study and reflection. It is an insight that explains vast amounts of the world around us. It is a flash of brilliance, a revelation that millions have missed, a paradigm for understanding the past and future. It is a rebuke to intellectuals from time immemorial and a new way of thinking for true intellectuals of the future. No single essay by Hayek is more important". ( Jeffrey A. Tucker)
Published in 1944. In this book, Hayek warns that the collectivist idea of the State control of economy invariably leads to tyranny. "Many who think themselves infinitely superior to the aberrations of naziism, and sincerely hate all its manifestations, work at the same time for ideals whose realization would lead straight to the abhorred tyranny" (F. Hayek)
Published in 1943. If you want the key sentence to The Fountainhead—it’s in Roark’s speech. “I wished to come here and say that I am a man who does not exist for others. It had to be said. The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing.” (Ayn Rand)
Published in 1936. "We the Living is not a novel “about Soviet Russia.” It is a novel about Man against the State" (Ayn Rand)
In this book, published in 2001, Hoppe examines the transformation of the West from monarchy to democracy and argues that monarchy, with all its problems, is still a much lesser evil than mass democracy.
In Liberty or Equality, published in 1952, Kuehnelt-Leddihn examines democracy and liberalism and shows that democracy does not mean liberty. He also analyses the term equality that became popular in the 18th century and argues that majority rule in democracy is a threat to individual liberty and that democracy inevitably leads to dictatorship.
In Authority and the Individual, published in 1949, Bertrand Russell examines the questions about the balance between the state and individual freedom.
In this book, published in 1954. Mises tries to answer one of the greatest questions of all time: why the intellectuals hate capitalism.
Published in 1949. "Human Action is the core text of the Austrian School [of economics] and the most rigorous and extended defense of the free economy ever written" (Robert Murphy)
Published in 1946. "Henry Hazlitt wrote this book following his stint at the New York Times as an editorialist. His hope was to reduce the whole teaching of economics to a few principles and explain them in ways that people would never forget. It worked. He relied on some stories by Bastiat and his own impeccable capacity for logical thinking and crystal-clear prose."
Published in 1945, the book is a defense of open society and an attack on human attempts to change the world through "social engineering" which can only lead to a totalitarian system.
Published in 1937. "Democracy is ever eager for rapid progress, and the only progress which can be rapid is progress downhill. For this reason I suspect that all democracies carry within them the seeds of their own destruction, and I cannot believe that democracy is to be our final form of government. And indeed, there is little enough of it left in Europe today." (Sir James Jeans)
Published in 1935. "It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own. All the power it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which State power can be drawn" (A. Nock.)
Published in 1931. "In the great tradition of Greek philosophy, this is a volume of the living credos of 22 outstanding modern thinkers..."
Published in 1930, the book analyzes the phenomenon of the "mass-man".
The main issue discussed in the book is the choice between liberty and statism.
Published in 1908. "The State may be defined as an organization of one class dominating over the other classes. Such a class organization can come about in one way only, namely, through conquest and the subjection of ethnic groups by the dominating group. This can be demonstrated with almost mathematical certainty." (F. Oppenheimer)
Опубл.: 1907. "Где есть опека над людьми, кажущаяся забота о их счастье и довольстве, соединенная с презрением к людям, с неверием в их высшее происхождение и высшее предназначение, - там жив дух Великого Инквизитора. Где счастье предпочитается свободе дальше...
Published in 1901. The code of government of the legendary King Pausole prescribed but two laws for his subjects: the first being, Hurt no man. Then do as you please.
Published in 1899, the book details Le Bon's view of socialism as a religious movement.
In Democracy and Liberty, published in 1899, Lecky examines how the growing tendency towards mass democracy might undermine individual liberty.
"But any open-minded person who takes the trouble today to read or reread The Man versus the State will probably be startled by two things. The first is the uncanny clairvoyance with which Spencer foresaw what the future encroachments of the State were likely to be on individual liberty, above all in the economic realm. The second is the extent to which these encroachments had already occurred in 1884, the year in which he was writing". (Henry Hazlitt)
Опубл.: 1866. "Братья Карамазовы - величайший роман из всех, когда-либо написанных, а Легенда о Великом Инквизиторе - одно из высочайших достижений мировой литературы, переоценить которое невозможно." (З. Фрейд)
Published in 1850, addresses the following question: why is it considered lawful for the state to engage in actions which are unlawful for the individual?
Published in 1850, "That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen", also known as the broken window fallacy, is an essay that teaches you to see beyond the effects that are seen and to descerrn those which are not see.
The book consists of two volumes published five years apart (in 1835 and 1840). The first volume analyzes the conditions and political institutions in America, the second, American culture.
"Industrial Society and Its Future", also known as the "Unabomber Manifesto", was printed verbatim by The New York Times and The Washington Post on September 19, 1995
The Memoirs, published in 1833, include not only the details of Chateaubriand's persoonal life but also a record of important historical and political events of the era
Published in 1755. The chapters on inflation and money printing are particularly interesting. They describe the process that became known as The Cantillon Effect.
In this essay, published in 1748, David Hume argues that nearly all governments are founded on usurpation or conquest and not on a social contract as some philosophers believed.
The Treatise, published in 1740, is one of the of the most significant works of Western philosophy. Understanding human nature helps explain so much about the world we live in.
Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) was one of the greatest thinkers of the 17th and 18th centuries.
Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) was one of the greatest thinkers of the 17th and 18th centuries.
Published nonymously in 1721, Persian Letters address a wide range of topics: human feeling, political and social institutions, society, freedom, books, money, and more
A collection of essays written by the French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal.
In the Second Treatise, published in 1690, Locke discusses the importance of "natural liberty" or natural rights
In Leviathan, written in 1651, Hobbes argues that political authority is justified by a hypothetical social contract (the Covenant).
Lord Acton is perhaps best known for his famous expression "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." The History of Freedom in Antiquity was delivered in his address to the Members of the Bridgenorth Institute on February 26, 1877.
Michel De Montaigne is considered the faother of Essay
Published in 1620, this book is the description of Bacon's scientific method. Although considered the father of the scientific method, "In recent times, Bacon has been ungratefully debunked" (J. Barzun)
Five books, two giants, and many entertaining, educational, and moral stories by Rabelais.
Satirical essay by Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536), wirtten 1509.
The Letters of Pliny the Younger are one of the most important sources about life in the Roman Empire in the first century.
This book is the detailed explanation of the fall of the Roman Empire.
Six volumes cover the history of the Western Civilization from the height of the Roman Empire to its fall.
The Chronographia of Michael Psellus. Chronicles the Byzantine Empire, beginning in 1025. Personal memoirs of the finest Byzantine scholar.
Lectures by the Stoic philosopher Epictetus
Meditatinos, philosophical reflections by the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius.
Letters from Seneca, a Stoic, to Lucilius, a Roman knight.
"My plan is to report a few final things about Augustus, then Tiberius’ principate and the rest, without anger or favour, from whose causes I consider myself distant." (Tacitus)
Suetonius describes the lives of Rome’s first 12 leaders from Julius Caesar to Domitian.
One of Plato's best-known works. Written around 375 BC. Including the cave allegory.
This essay was first presented by Schiller during his lecturs at Jena University in August 1789. It describes two forms of government: Oligarchy (Lycurgus' Sparta) and Republic (Solon's Athens).
The history of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians that took place in 431-404 BC.
Collection of biographies of famous Greek and Roman men. Plutarch focused not so much on the historical details as on individual character. I am including the notes for Lycurgus of Sparta and Solon of Athens.
Herodotus, the Father of History, born in 484 BC in, what now is Bodrum, Turkey. The subject of The Histories is the 20 years of war between Greece and Persia (499 and 479 B.C.)
Об этих произведения столько написано.. Ничего нового я добавить не могу. Обязательно читайте! Лучший русский перевод - перевод В. А. Жуковского.
Гильгамеше - герой древней Месопотамии, правитель города Урук. Эпос о Гильгамеше - одно из старейших литературных проихведений в мире.
Bhagavad Gita is part of a Hindu epic, the Mahabharata. It is set as a dialogue between Arjuna, a warrior hesitating before battle, and Krishna, his charioteer and teacher.