journalist, novelist, political philosopher, and a leading literary critic of her day. Along with Rose Wilder Lane
and Ayn Rand
, who both acknowledged an intellectual debt to Paterson, she is one of the three founding mothers of American libertarianism
. Paterson's best-known work, her 1943 book The God of the Machine
, a treatise on political philosophy
, economics
, and history
, reached conclusions and espoused beliefs that many libertarians
credit as a foundation of their philosophy.
An army is a diversion of energy from the productive life of a nation.
Money is indispensable to a long-circuit heavy load energy system. It must be used when a sufficient surplus is being produced to allow a margin for exchange, and cost of transport, over a considerable distance. Money represents a storage battery when idle, and a generalized mode of the conversion of energy when it is in motion, with a function of equating time and space.
The humanitarian in theory is the terrorist in action.
The philanthropist, the politician, and the pimp are inevitably found in alliance because they have the same motives, they seek the same ends, to exist for, through, and by others.
But when the good people do know, as they certainly do, that three million persons (at the least estimate) were starved to death in one year by the methods they approve, why do they still fraternize with the murderers and support the measures? Because they have been told that the lingering death of the three millions might ultimately benefit a greater number. The argument applies equally well to cannibalism.
"If the state wants to eliminate prostitution, it would have to kill half of the population."