Rose Wilder Lane

“Writing fiction is... an endless and always defeated effort to capture some quality of life without killing it.”

“As novices, we think we're entirely responsible for the way people treat us. I have long since learned that we are responsible only for the way we treat people.”

“Making the best of things is a damn poor way of dealing with them. My life has been a series of escapes from that quicksand.”

“The real protection of life and property, always and everywhere.”

“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.”

“The need for Government is the need for force; where force is unnecessary, there is no need for Government.”

“It is precisely democracy which is destroying the American political structure, American law, and the American economy.”

“Making the best of things is... a damn poor way of dealing with them. My whole life has been a series of escapes from that quicksand.”

“I came out of the Soviet Union no longer a communist, because I believed in personal freedom.”