Charles Murray

rooster crow sun rise politician

“it is said that roosters think the sun rises because they crow. Politicians are much the same.”

—Charles Murray

self-respect earn fail

“People need self-respect, but self-respect must be earned — it cannot be self-respect if it's not earned — and the only way to earn anything is to achieve it in the face of the possibility of failing.”

—Charles Murray

government enforce law regulation voluntary compliance

"The government cannot enforce its mountain of laws and regulations without voluntary compliance."

—Charles Murray

writing tool idea intellectual creativity

“the process of writing is your most valuable single tool for developing better ideas. The process of writing is the dominant source of intellectual creativity.”

—Charles Murray

menial job support wife children satisfaction status

“A man who is holding down a menial job and thereby supporting a wife and children is doing something authentically important with his life. He should take deep satisfaction from that, and be praised by his community for doing so. If that same man lives under a system that says the children of the woman he sleeps with will be taken care of whether or not he contributes, then that status goes away."

—Charles Murray

society threat government bad good

“A free society is most threatened not by uses of government that are obviously bad, but by uses of government that seem obviously good.”

—Charles Murray

socialization textbook elementary school family

“The main vehicle for nineteenth-century socialization was the leading textbook used in elementary school. They were so widely used that sections in them became part of the national language. Theodore Roosevelt, scion of an elite New York family, schooled by private tutors, had been raised on the same textbooks as the children of Ohio farmers, Chicago tradesman, and New England fishermen. If you want to know what constituted being a good American from the mid-nineteenth century to World War I, spend a few hours browsing through the sections in the McGuffey Readers.”

—Charles Murray

free will human flourish environment

“Regardless of whether people have free will, human flourishing requires that they live in an environment in which they are treated as if they did.”

—Charles Murray

provide poor produce barrier poverty trap

"We tried to provide more for the poor and produced more poor instead. We tried to remove the barriers to escape poverty, and inadvertently built a trap."

—Charles Murray

good doctor minute electrician hard

"I can get a good doctor in a minute and a half. Getting a really good electrician - that's hard."

—Charles Murray

tattoos curmudgeon millennia common tribe

"As for tattoos, it does no good to remind curmudgeons that tattoos have been around for millennia. Yes, we will agree, tattoos have been common - first among savage tribes and then, more recently, among the lowest classes of Western societies."

—Charles Murray