About TCCRI

“The fact of the matter is that TCCRI is one of the premier policy organizations in the entire United States of America, and one reason that is so important is because of the effect that it has on the state of Texas and another reason why it’s important is because…what happens here does not stay here; what happens here we make sure expands across the United States of America.”

“The recognition of the insuperable limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men’s fatal striving to control society — a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows, but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization which no brain has designed but which has grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals.”

“Great ideas do not burst upon the world unannounced. They are reached by a gradual development over a length of time usually proportionate to their importance.”

“There is no western, capitalistic country in which the conditions of the masses have not improved in an unprecedented way.”

“Freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it.”

“The market is a more powerful and more reliable liberating force than government can ever be.”

“It is no good to have convictions unless you have the will to translate those convictions into actions … I often think that when you are going for consensus so often it means that those who believe as I believe tend to give in to the left wing and you move steadily further and further left.”

“[P]ublic management is not an arena in which to find Big Answers; it is a world of settled institutions designed to allow imperfect people to used flawed procedures to cope with insoluble problems.”

“In the meantime we live in a country that despite its baffling array of rules and regulations and the insatiable desire of some people to use government to rationalize society still makes it possible to get drinkable water instantly, put through a telephone call in seconds, deliver a letter in a day, and obtain a passport in a week. Our Social Security checks arrive on time. Some state prisons, and most of the federal ones, are reasonably decent and humane institutions. The great majority of Americans, cursing all the while, pay their taxes. One can stand on the deck of an aircraft carrier during night flight operations and watch two thousand nineteen-year-old boys faultlessly operate one of the most complex organizational systems ever created. There are not many places where all this happens. It is astonishing it can be made to happen at all.”

“[T]raditionalists must be committed to the preservation of spaces for private life that are protected from the perverse shortsightedness of politics… [W]e should be intensely engaged in the struggle for the soul of our society—knowing we can expect no ultimate victory from politics, but also that we are by no means destined to defeat, and that by persisting in the struggle we make room for another generation to rise and thrive and seek to embody the good. Politics can do no more than that, but it must do no less.”

“What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom.”

“Our framers understood that government was inclined to advance its own interests, even to the point of ham-fisted bullying, which is precisely why the Constitution was written–to keep government on a leash, not We the People.”

“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”

“Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.”

Mere unthinking negative opposition to the current of events, clutching in despair at what we still retain, will not suffice in this age. A conservatism of instinct must be reinforced by a conservatism of thought and imagination.