history History
Historical knowledge and lessons from the past
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"We see by experience that in France, where money is scarcer than in Spain, bread, wine, cloth, and labour are worth much less. And even in Spain, before the discovery of the Indies, goods and labour were much cheaper than they are today, for the reason that there was then much less money."
menu_book Comentario Resolutorio de Cambios (Commentary on Exchange)
View Full Quote"Europe has never been a producer of origins. It has been a consumer and a transmitter. Its genius lies not in invention ex nihilo but in the capacity to digest what it receives and to pass it on transformed, deepened, made available for new generations."
menu_book Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization
View Full Quote"Europe is characterized by what I shall call its eccentricity. I mean by this that Europe does not have its center in itself. Its source and its norm lie elsewhere, before it, and outside it."
menu_book Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization
View Full Quote"The model of European identity is not exclusive but inclusive. Europe is defined not by what it excludes but by what it is capable of integrating. Its capacity to welcome the foreign without ceasing to be itself is what constitutes its originality."
menu_book Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization
View Full Quote"Rome is not the origin of European culture. It is the instrument of its transmission. Rome receives from Greece and from Israel, and passes on to the Latin West what it has received. To be Roman is to come in second place."
menu_book Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization
View Full Quote"Medieval Iceland, medieval Ireland, the Law Merchant of stateless commercial networks, and many other historical examples demonstrate that legal and judicial order does not require the state. These polycentric legal systems provided security and conflict resolution through purely private and voluntary mechanisms."
menu_book The Myth of National Defense: Essays on the Theory and History of Security Production
View Full Quote"Mises fought for liberty at a time when all the great powers of his era, political, academic, and journalistic, had turned against it. He never surrendered."
menu_book Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism
View Full Quote"The State has never been created by a social contract; it has always been born in conquest and exploitation."
menu_book Anatomy of the State
View Full Quote"When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness."
menu_book Democracy in America
View Full Quote"The whole world, which is in a sense a single republic, has the power to enact laws that are just and convenient for all persons, such as are the rules of the law of nations."
menu_book De Indis (On the Indians)
View Full Quote"The barbarians undoubtedly possessed true dominion, both public and private, before the arrival of the Spaniards among them, just as Christians possess it. Neither their princes nor private persons could be despoiled of their property on the ground that they were not true owners."
menu_book De Indis (On the Indians)
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De Indis (On the Indians)
Francisco de Vitoria's landmark 1532 lecture at the University of Salamanca, laying the groundwork for international law and natural rights theory....
Read MoreDe Rege et Regis Institutione (On the King and the Royal Institution)
Juan de Mariana's major work of political theory, published in 1599. Mariana argues that political power originates in the community and is held in...
Read MoreEccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization
Brague's foundational work arguing that European culture is fundamentally "eccentric", it has always received its cultural substance from outside i...
Read MoreMises: The Last Knight of Liberalism
A comprehensive 1,143-page intellectual biography of Ludwig von Mises, tracing his life and the development of his economic and political thought f...
Read MoreReport to the Fifth Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. on the St. Petersburg Split and the Institution of the Party Tribunal Ensuing Therefrom
Lenin's April 1907 defence speech, published as a separate pamphlet, before a Bolshevik-Menshevik party tribunal convened over a polemical pamphlet...
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psychology Concepts
Gresham's Law
An economic principle stating that when two forms of currency are in circulation with the same legal face value, but one is undervalued relative to...
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