Quotes from Charles Murray

Biology is not going to put us out of business. The new knowledge that geneticists and neuroscientists are providing, conjoined with the kinds of analyses we do best, will enable us to take giant strides in understanding how societies, polities, and economies really function. We are like physicists at the outset of the nineteenth century, who were poised at a moment in history that would produce Ampères and Faradays.

biology, with devastating effects."2 Why the resistance? Because the social sciences have been in the grip of an orthodoxy that is scared stiff of biology.

In a purposeful organization run by good people, there's always more useful work than can be done in an eight-hour workday

That's the UBI. A cash grant, with a surtax, funded by eliminating the transfers that currently exist. I require that $3,000 be devoted to health care, but otherwise I will argue that many of the best effects of the UBI are fostered by the least direction: "Here's the money. Use it as you see fit. Your life is in your hands.

The twin propositions of this book are that we are at the end of the American project as the founders intended it, but that opportunities are opening for preserving the best qualities of the American project in a new incarnation.

Here's the secret you should remember whenever you hear someone lamenting how tough it is to get ahead in the postindustrial global economy: Few people work nearly as hard as they could. The few who do have it made.

Philosopher John Rawls distilled the sense of Aristotle's discussion into what he labeled the Aristotelian principle, which Rawls stated as follows: Other things equal, human beings enjoy the exercise of their realized capacities (their innate or trained abilities), and this enjoyment increases the more the capacity is realized, or the greater its complexity.

But the people who have recently come to dominance and those who will come to dominance in the new century are increasingly aware—or can be made aware—that freedom still works in their own lives and that they effectively exempt themselves from most of the laws that take freedom away from other people.

More important: Unless you're in the hard sciences, the process of writing is your most valuable single tool for developing better ideas. The process of writing is the dominant source of intellectual creativity.

The third Great Awakening is variously said to have started between the 1860s and 1890; it continued into the early 1900s and laid the ethical basis for the emancipation of women, the reforms of the New Deal and, later, the civil rights movement.

When you are faced with a challenge that is far beyond your skills, the result is anxiety. When your skills are high but the challenges are low, you are bored. If you have low skills and the challenge is also low, you are able to do the job but are unlikely to become absorbed in it—apathy is the characteristic response. But when the skills are high and in balance with a stiff challenge, flow occurs. It is the Aristotelian principle on a two-dimensional plot.

PURPOSE A major stream of human accomplishment is fostered by a culture in which the most talented people believe that life has a purpose and that the function of life is to fulfill that purpose.

The average Harvard freshman in 1952 would have placed in the bottom 10 percent of the incoming class by 1960.

After a couple of hours of intense work, I look at the paragraph I'm struggling with and know that it will be easier to finish it tomorrow. Other writers who talk about their routines usually make the same point—three or four hours a day is about the maximum that can be expected.

A major stream of human accomplishment is fostered by a culture that encourages the belief that individuals can act efficaciously as individuals, and enables them to do so.

They are also increasingly isolated. The new isolation involves spatial, economic, educational, cultural, and, to some degree, political isolation. This growing isolation has been accompanied by growing ignorance about the country over which they have so much power.

The argument is that people who know the most about an artistic field are drawn to certain works. The qualities that draw their attention are those that offer the biggest payoff in the aesthetics of the art, and this payoff is based on qualities distinct from subjective sentiments.

Discarding the welfare state in favor of a universal basic income is no longer something that would be economically feasible in America's future. It is economically feasible right now.

Here, I put it as an assertion: If the criteria for the choice are rootedness in human experience, seriousness of purpose, and intellectual depth, choosing the classic aesthetic tradition over postmodernism is not a close call.

In the decades ahead, a life well-lived will often have to be one that does not involve a job traditionally defined. A universal basic income will be an essential part of the transition to a world unlike any in the history of our species.

All systematic civil disobedience should involve acts that are malum prohibitum: illegal because the state says so, not because they are bad in themselves.

pp. 6-7: I want America to return to the ideal of treating people as individuals, so I have to write a book that treats Americans as groups. But there's no way around it. Those of us who want to defend the American creed have been unwilling to say openly that races have significant group differences. Since we have been unwilling to say that, we have been defenseless against claims that racism is to blame for unequal outcomes. What else could it be? We have been afraid to answer candidly.

Traditions decay when the reality facing the new generation changes. The habit of thrift decays if there is no penalty for not saving. The work ethic decays if there is no penalty for not working. Neighborliness

People are unequal in the abilities that lead to economic success in life. To the extent that inequality of wealth is grounded in the way people freely choose to conduct their lives, I do not find it troubling. People