"People will not look forward to posterity who will not look backward to their ancestors."

Edmund Burke
 

Especially in his speeches and lectures Ludwig von Mises "would emphasize again and again that interventionist policies are 'wrong,' not from the point of view of the economist himself, but from the point of view of those initiating these policies (or at least from the point of view of those whose well-being the policies are supposed to enhance)."

Israel M. Kirzner in Edwin G. Dolan, ed., The Foundations of Modern Austrian Economics

"As Mr. Pond knows, the last lesson of the wise man is that the fool is sometimes right."

Steve Miller in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 9 #6

"As Mr. Pond knows, the last lesson of the wise man is that the fool is sometimes right."

Steve Miller in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 9 #6

"The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails."

William Arthur Ward, quoted as "Thought du jour" in "Social Studies" in Globe and Mail Dec. 1, 2003

"How gloomy would be these mansions of the dead [catacombs] to him who did not know that he shall never die..."

Imlac in Samuel Johnson The History of Rasselas, reflecting on how brief and futile even illustrious lives can seem

"a strange creature, hard to swallow and impossible to digest."

Detective Nero Wolfe re one of the people involved in a case, in Rex Stout The Golden Spiders

In my latest Mercatornet article, I discuss the improbably close link between the founder of the Protestant Reformation and post-modernism.