“It is because the free market serves evil as well as good that many people think they can rid society of evil by slaying this faithful, amoral servant.”
Read, Leonard E., Let Freedom Reign
“He who knows others is learned; he who knows himself is wise.”
Lao-Tzu [e-mailed by a friend without further attribution]
“A pessimist is one who has been intimately acquainted with an optimist.”
Elbert Hubbard, quoted in “Social Studies” in Globe & Mail Sept. 13, 2004
“Liberty, next to religion, has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime, from the sowing of the seed at Athens, 2,460 years ago, until the ripened harvest was gathered by men of our race.”
Start of Lord Acton (John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton) The History of Freedom
Suzanne: “Rob, don’t talk to me when I’m at my wits’ end."
Rob (to Tina): "… Is Suzanne ever at her wits’ beginning?”
Tina: “It’s a very narrow window of opportunity…"
“Tina’s Groove” comic strip in Ottawa Citizen March 9, 2004
“the sanest of all human impulses, the impulse that bids us put our trust in industry and a defined aim.”
G.K. Chesterton, “Lunacy and Letters,” in Alberto Manguel, ed., On Lying in Bed and Other Essays by G.K. Chesterton
“History is a vaccine against bad ideas. Unfortunately, current problems arise largely from a recycling of bad ideas from the past.”
Valerius Geist, Wildlife Conservation Policy
“The state is not the source of individual rights or of social community. It presupposes that these exist and are worth protecting, and that individuals reciprocally benefit from their interactions with one another…. The state becomes a moral imperative precisely because there is something of value that is worth protecting from the unbridled use of force by those who forsake tradition, family, and friends. A set of forced exchanges from existing rights does not create the original rights so exchanged… A forced exchange does not create culture and sense of community, it protects them by removing the need for compelling or allowing everyone to act as a policeman in his own estate.”
Richard Epstein, Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain