Joseph Goebbels on propaganda

Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated are confident that they are acting on their own free will.

~ Joseph Goebbels, Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda in Nazi Germany

"The Rock" on success

Success at anything will come down to this: focus and effort, and we control both.

~ Dwayne Johnson

Joseph Goebbels on propaganda

Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated are confident they are acting on their own free will.

~ Joseph Goebbels

Friedrich Hayek on attitude and success

It is often contended that the belief that a person is solely responsible for his own fate is held only by the successful. This in itself is not so unacceptable as its underlying suggestion, which is that people hold this belief because they have been successful. I, for one, am inclined to think that the connection is the other way round and that people often are successful because they hold this belief. Though a man’s conviction that all he achieves is due solely to his exertions, skill, and intelligence may be largely false, it is apt to have the most beneficial effects on his energy and circumspection. And if the smug pride of the successful is often intolerable and offensive, the belief that success depends wholly on him is probably the pragmatically most effective incentive to successful action; whereas the more a man indulges in the propensity to blame others or circumstances for his failures, the more disgruntled and ineffective he tends to become.

 ~ Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty

Murray Rothbard on scientism

The key to scientism is its denial of the existence of individual consciousness and will.  This takes two main forms: applying mechanical analogies from the physical sciences to individual men, and applying organismic analogies to such fictional collective wholes as “society.”  The latter course attributes consciousness and will, not to individuals, but to some collective organic whole of which the individual is merely a determined cell.  Both methods are aspects of the rejection of individual consciousness.

~ Murray Rothbard, "What is the Proper Way to Study Man?," Mises.org, December 28, 2016

[Originally appeared as a chapter in Scientism and Values, Helmut Schoeck and James W. Wiggins, eds. (Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand, 1960). Excerpted from Economic Controversies.]