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Rose Wilder Lane

Rose Wilder Lane Books

Journalist

Old Home Town

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“Nobody can plan the actions of even a thousand living persons, separately. Anyone attempting to control millions must divide them into classes, and make a plan applying to these classes. But these classes do not exist. No two persons are alike. No two are in the same circumstances; no two have the same abilities; beyond getting the barest necessities of life, no two have the same desires. Therefore the men who try to enforce, in real life, a planned economy that is their theory, come up against the infinite diversity of human beings. The most slavish multitude of men that was ever called "demos" or "labor" or "capital" or "agriculture" or "the masses," actually are men; they are not sheep. Naturally, by their human nature, they escape in all directions from regulations applying to non-existent classes. It is necessary to increase the number of men who supervise their actions. Then (for officials are human, too) it is necessary that more men supervise the supervisors. Still, individuals will continue to act individually, in ways that they plan. These ways do not fit into Authority's plan. So still more men are needed, imperatively needed, to stop or to supervise these new ways of acting; and more men to supervise these supervisors; and more men to co-ordinate the constantly increasing complexity of all this supervision. An attempt to exercise a control of individuals that in reality does not exist, must increase in volume.”

GovernmentFreedomGroupsCircumstancesControlBureaucracyImpossibilitySupervisionIndividuals
Author:Rose Wilder Lane
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“The prairies were dust. Day after day, summer after summer, the scorching winds blew the dust and the sun was brassy in a yellow sky. Crop after crop failed. Again and again the barren land must be mortgaged for taxes and food and next year's seed. The agony of hope ended when there was not harvest and no more credit, no money to pay interest and taxes; the banker took the land. Then the bank failed.”

YearsNextInterestPaySunSkyLandWindTaxesSummerCreditSeedsDustYellowAgonyAgain And AgainHarvestCropsBankersNext YearNo MoneyBarrenPrairieScorching
Author:Rose Wilder Lane
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“One thing I hate about the New Deal is that it is killing what, to me, is the American pioneering spirit. I simply do not know what to tell my own boys, leaving school and confronting this new world whose ideal is Security and whose practice is dependence upon government instead of upon one's self. All the old character-values seem simply insane from a practical point of view; the self-reliant, the independent, the courageous man is penalized from every direction.”

KnowsMenWorldSelfCharacterSeemsGovernmentSchoolSpiritValuesHateMy OwnViewsDealsBoysPracticeOne ThingSecurityIdealsI HateIndependentKillingLeavingPoint Of ViewPracticalsInsaneCourageousNew WorldDependenceConfrontingNew DealPioneeringSelf ReliantThings I HateCourageous ManLeaving SchoolPioneering Spirit
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“Two deep human desires were at war ... the longing for stability, for form, for permanence, which in its essence is the desire for death, and the opposing hunger for movement, change, instability and risk, which are life. Men came from the east and built these American towns because they wished to go no farther, and the towns they built were shaped by the urge to go onward.”

MenHumansTwoWarFormDesireRiskMovementBuiltEssenceTownsLongingHungerEastUrgesStabilityOpposingPermanenceInstability
Book:Old Home Town
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“I am too sick to work and haven't money enough to last 2 months and pay income tax. I want to keep going but do not see quite how, and there is no alternative - rather than justify my mother's 25-year dread of my "coming back on her, sick," I must kill myself. If she has to pay funeral costs, at least she will cut them to the bone and I will not be here to endure her martyrdom and prolong it by living.”

IfsWantYearsEnoughLastsMotherPayCuttingHavensMonthsCostTaxesSickEndureBonesIncomeAlternativesJustifyKeep GoingFuneralDreadComing BackIncome TaxMartyrdom
Author:Rose Wilder Lane
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“Houses are the abiding joys; they are the most emotion-stirring of all things. An automobile is regarded with fond affection, a typewriter becomes the inseparable companion, clothes can stir sentimentality, and the bit of bric-a-brac is a toy one would weep to see torn away - but houses are real, deep, emotional things. How much excitement in the cutting of a window, what enormous importance in the angle of a roof!”

RealJoyHouseBitsEmotionCuttingEmotionalClothesAll ThingsWindowImportanceAffectionEnormousExcitementCompanionToysRoofAngleTornAutomobileAbidingInseparableStirringTypewritersSentimentalityEmotional ThingsBricsDeep EmotionalReal Deep
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“Even the street, the sunshine, the very air had a special Sunday quality. We walked differently on Sundays, with greater propriety and stateliness. Greetings were more formal, more subdued, voices more meticulously polite. Everything was so smooth, bland, polished. And genuinely so, because this was Sunday. In church the rustling and the stillness were alike pervaded with the knowledge that all was for the best. Propriety ruled the universe. God was in His Heaven, and we were in our Sunday clothes.”

ReligionUniverseHeavenVoiceChurchQualityGreaterAirStreetsSpecialClothesSunshineSundayStillnessSmoothFormalPolitePolishedProprietyGreetingsBland
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“Life is a thin narrowness of taken-for-granted, a plank over a canyon in a fog. There is something under our feet, the taken-for-granted. A table is a table, food is food, we are we - because we don't question these things. And science is the enemy because it is the questioner. Faith saves our souls alive by giving us a universe of the taken-for-granted.”

LifeGivingSoulScienceLife IsUniverseEnemyTakenAliveFeetTablesGrantedFogTaken For GrantedCanyons
Author:Rose Wilder Lane
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“Happiness is something that comes into our lives through doors we don't even remember leaving open.”

RememberHappinessOur LivesDoorsGratitudeLeavingHappyCheerBeing HappySuicidalInsperationalCheerfulnessGreat HappinessLife HappinessJoy And HappinessInner HappinessAlways HappyJoyfulnessJust Be HappyJoy HappinessLife And HappinessHappiness And SuccessAlways Be HappyArt Of HappinessInner Peace And HappinessFound HappinessLive HappySuccess HappinessSharing Happiness
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“Nothing whatever but the constitutional law, the political structure, of these United States protects any American from arbitrary seizure of his property and his person, from the Gestapo and the Storm Troops, from the concentration camp, the torture chamber, the revolver at the back of his neck in a cellar.”

PersonsStatesGovernmentLawPoliticalUnitedLibertyUnited StatesProtectStructurePropertyStormTortureNecksConcentrationCampsTroopsArbitraryChamberCellarsConcentration CampSeizuresRevolverConstitutional LawGestapo
Author:Rose Wilder Lane
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“Anyone who says that economic security is a human right, has been to much babied. While he babbles, other men are risking and losing their lives to protect him. They are fighting the sea, fighting the land, fighting disease and insects and weather and space and time, for him, while he chatters that all men have a right to security and that some pagan god—Society, The State, The Government, The Commune—must give it to them. Let the fighting men stop fighting this inhuman earth for one hour, and he will learn how much security there is.”

MenGivingHumansHas BeensStatesGovernmentEarthFightingHoursSpaceSeaEconomicLandSecurityProtectDiseaseLosingWeatherInsectsTime And SpacePaganInhumanOne HourChatterCommunesEconomic SecurityPagan Gods
Author:Rose Wilder Lane
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