I, Pencil

Posted November 16, 2012, 12:45 p.m.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has produced an excellent short video called I, Pencil, which is adapted from a 1958 essay by Leonard E. Read. Additional related videos are available at ipencilmovie.org.

The video is a succinct illustration of how millions of people are involved, directly or indirectly, in the production of something as simple as a pencil. And this massive effort comes about through the voluntary cooperation of individuals making economic choices, not through the dictation of some central planning office.

It’s well worth six-and-a-half minutes of your time.

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.

Quotes

There is nothing indulgent about the Moral Law. It is as hard as nails. It tells you to do the straight thing and it does not seem to care how painful, or dangerous, or difficult it is to do.

C. S. Lewis

News is what somebody does not want you to print. All the rest is advertising.

Unknown

Children are the vessels into which adults pour their poison.

Salman Rushdie

The future will be better tomorrow.

Dan Quayle

Genuine authority constrains the arbitrary exercise of power. This constraint manifests itself when the authoritative agent cares, and takes responsibility, for those over whom the exertion of power is possible.

Jordan Peterson

I still feel you should rock the boat. And if you’re not in it, you should turn it over. But not unthinkingly.

Maya Angelou

Getting the right people in the right jobs is a lot more important than developing a strategy.

Jack Welch

Tyranny is . . . not good for the tyrant—because he or she becomes a tyrant, and there is nothing ennobling about that.

Jordan Peterson

The middle of the road is where the white line is—and that’s the worst place to drive.

Robert Frost

For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time: hatred ceases by love—this is an old rule.

Siddhartha Gautama

I can become quite angry and burning in anger, but I have never been bitter. Bitterness is a corrosive, terrible acid. It just eats you and makes you sick.

Maya Angelou

Rather than historical ‘objectivity,’ which implies personal detachment on the part of the scholar, the historian’s ideal ought to be honesty—an approach that is committed but strives to use evidence with scrupulous fairness.

James Hitchcock

The lesson of all this was, of course, that because we’re a great nation, our challenges seem complex. It will always be this way. But as long as we remember our first principles and believe in ourselves, the future will always be ours.

Ronald Reagan

Let the pulpit resound with the doctrines and sentiments of religious liberty.

John Adams

Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and security of person.

Universal Dec. of Human Rights

Millennia passed before humankind discovered that energy is the basis of matter. It may take a few more years before we prove that wisdom and knowledge are the basis of, and can actually create, energy which in turn creates matter.

Gerald Schroeder

Ofttimes [sensationalists] are the martyrs, but often they’re not even right.

Maya Angelou

The escape from tyranny is often followed not by Paradise, but by a sojourn in the desert, aimless, confused and deprived.

Jordan Peterson

The history of every human being passes through the threshold of a woman’s motherhood.

John Paul II

Speed. Quality. Price. Pick any two.

James M. Wallace

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