Inspired by my reading in the Austrian School lately, and this morning’s, er, interesting conversation with an “anti-war” pamphleteer, I offer the following from Ludwig von Mises:
To express wishes and hopes and to announce planned action may be forms of action in so far as they aim in themselves at the realization of a certain purpose. But they must not be confused with the actions to which they refer. They are not identical with the actions they announce, recommend, or reject. Action is a real thing. What counts is a man’s total behavior, and not his talk about planned but not realized acts.
Update: Mises on the uniformity of human reason:
Explorers and missionaries report that in Africa and Polynesia primitive man stops short at his earliest perception of things and never reasons if he can in any way avoid it. European and American educators sometimes report the same of their students.