“In order to please a selfish politician, Lincoln had signed an order transferring certain regiments. Stanton not only refused to carry out Lincoln’s orders but swore that Lincoln was a damn fool for ever signing such orders. What happened? When Lincoln was told what Stanton had said, Lincoln calmly replied: ‘If Stanton said I was a damned fool then I must be, for he is nearly always right. I’ll just step over and see for myself.’ Lincoln did go to see Stanton. Stanton convinced him that the order was wrong, and Lincoln withdrew it. ”

Dale Carnegie How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

“If it’s all the same to history, it need not repeat itself any more.”

“Bob Edwards Calgary Eye Opener May 31, 1919” quoted in Ottawa Citizen September 30, 1998

“An economic model of behaviour that lays any claim at all to predictive power must rely on the uniformity of human nature summarized in Homo economicus, or economic self-interest objectively defined. Such a model has served economists well; the model in all its variations explains much of what we know about the political-governmental sphere of human action in addition to the much more that we know and can explain about human action in market relationships… [and] yields meaningful predictions…”

“Constitutional revolution in Democracy” in Geoffrey Brennan and James M. Buchanan The Reason of Rules: Constitutional Political Economy

“A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what’s going on.”

William S. Burroughs (quoted for instance at https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/14116-a-paranoid-is-someone-who-knows-a-little-of-what-s)

“A man is known by the silence he keeps.”

Oliver Herford, quoted as “Thought du jour” in “Social Studies” in Globe & Mail June 24, 2005

“The fundamental question to be asked about any theological statement is, ‘What is the evidence that makes you think this might be true?’”

Author’s Introduction to John Polkinghorne The Faith of a Physicist

The German ambassador to Austria-Hungary, Baron von Tschirschky “was not much liked in Vienna: he was a stiff north German of the sort who agreed with Bismarck that ‘the Bavarian is a cross between the Austrian and homo sapiens’.”

Norman Stone “Archduke Franz Ferdinand Survives Sarajevo” in Andrew Roberts, ed., What Might Have Been

According to Schopenhauer “It is this removal of the personal equation which leaves the genius so maladapted in the world of will-full, practical, personal activity. By seeing so far he does not see what is near; he is imprudent and ‘queer’; and while his vision is hitched to a star he falls into a well.”

Will Durant The Story of Philosophy [paraphrasing not quoting]