"You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the industrious out of it. You don’t multiply wealth by dividing it. Government cannot give anything to anybody that it doesn’t first take from somebody else. Whenever somebody receives something without working for it, somebody else has to work for it without receiving. The worst thing that can happen to a nation is for half of the people to get the idea they don’t have to work because somebody else will work for them, and the other half to get the idea that it does no good to work because they don’t get to enjoy the fruit of their labor." Adrian Pierce Rogers in his 1996 Ten Secrets for a Successful Family (frequently misattributed online, incidentally)
In my latest National Post column I argue that while history doesn't repeat, its lessons do... especially for those not paying attention. (Due to an editing mishap, at the end of the 3rd paragraph, between the sentence ending "great and small." and the one beginning "Regrettably, as with...", the sentence "But I am sure we’re not going to fight World War One again." was omitted.)
"what Milton Friedman called TANSTAAFL – 'There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.'" William C. Mitchell and Randy T. Simmons, Beyond Politics: Markets, Welfare, and the Failure of Bureaucracy
"Sam Spade: Ten thousand? We were talking about a lot more money than this. Kasper Gutman: Yes, sir, we were, but this is genuine coin of the realm. With a dollar of this, you can buy ten dollars of talk." The Maltese Falcon
Wrapping up 2016 and looking forward to 2017, a word of thanks to all those who made our documentary work possible in the past year.
"This book argues that our civilization depends, not only for its origin but also for its preservation, on what can be precisely described only as the extended order of human cooperation, an order more commonly, if somewhat misleadingly, known as capitalism." First sentence in Friedrich Hayek The Fatal Conceit
"Sow a thought and you reap an act;/ Sow an act and you reap a habit;/ Sow a habit and you reap a character;/ Sow a character and you reap a destiny." "Anonymous" quoted by Michael Novak in Business as a Calling
"I don’t think necessity is the mother of invention. Invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble." Agatha Christie (quoted as Thought du jour in "Social Studies" in Globe and Mail August 6, 2001)