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

No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has emerged from the kingdom of night.

The pure, clean water of spiritual truth is placed in rusty containers, and the subsequent failings of the church down through the centuries should not be projected onto the faith itself, as if the water had been the problem.

The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.

The present age men are not very ready to die in defense of their opinions, but they are rarely inclined to change them; . . . there are fewer martyrs as well as fewer apostates.

The common good, therefore, is the end of civil government, and common consent, the foundation on which it is established.

Let falsehood enter the world, let it even reign in the world—but not with my help.

It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort.

If you want to be loved, be lovable.

Nothing is as easy to make as a promise this winter to do something next summer; this is how commencement speakers are caught.

Brilliant minds often reject Christianity because they don’t want it to be true, because it is no longer fashionable[,] or because it commands obedience, repentance and humility.

Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

The said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of The United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.

If people have always said it, it is probably true. . . . If people have not always said it, but [are] saying it now, it is probably a lie. . . .

You can hire logic, in the shape of a lawyer, to prove anything that you want to prove.

In America any boy may become President, and I suppose it’s just one of the risks he takes.

But once you find the truth, you ought to be prepared to stand on the street corner and use all your gifts to right the wrong.

I like to do my principal research in bars, where people are more likely to tell the truth or, at least, lie less convincingly than they do in briefings and books.

You know, Gina, Apple [Computer Inc.] is like a ship. That ship is loaded with treasure, but there’s a hole in the ship. And my job is to get everyone to row in the same direction.

No country can sustain, in idleness, more than a small percentage of its numbers. The great majority must labor at something productive.

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