A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.
— Alexander Pope
EppsNet Archive: Quotations
If All We Want Are Jobs
If all we want are jobs, we can create any number — for example, have people dig holes and then fill them up again, or perform other useless tasks. Work is sometimes its own reward. Mostly, however, it is the price we pay to get the things we want. Our real objective is not just jobs but productive jobs — jobs that will mean more goods and services to consume. — Milton Friedman Read more →
Every individual has a place to fill in the world and is important in some respect whether he chooses to be so or not. — Nathaniel Hawthorne
We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories. — Henry David Thoreau
If I could go back to my younger self, especially in the most difficult times, I would just say, don’t worry. Just do what you feel in your heart and everything will be all right. — Emmylou Harris
The Great Virtue of a Free Market System
The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another. — Milton Friedman Read more →
Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced. — James Baldwin
Make voyages. Attempt them. There’s nothing else. — Tennessee Williams
Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little. –Edmund Burke
Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter. Who would think that those branches would turn green again and blossom, but we hope it, we know it. — Goethe
A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both. -– Milton Friedman
Well first of all, tell me: Is there some society you know that doesn’t run on greed? You think Russia doesn’t run on greed? You think China doesn’t run on greed? What is greed? Of course, none of us are greedy, it’s only the other fellow who’s greedy. — Milton Friedman
But at times I wondered if I had not come a long way only to find that what I really sought was something I had left behind. — Jon Krakauer, Into Thin Air
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All Your Problems Are Caused By Other People
There are few ideas more potent than the notion that all your problems are caused by other people and their unfairness to you. That was the royal road to unbridled power for Hitler, Lenin, and Mao — which is to say, millions of human beings paid with their lives for believing it. — Thomas Sowell Read more →
To find yourself, think for yourself. — Socrates
The Doors of Perception
We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. — Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception Read more →
Then I heard the Lord asking, “Whom should I send as a messenger to this people? Who will go for us?” I said, “Here I am. Send me.” — Isaiah 6:8
Incompetents
Politics and political office are not and never have been the method and means by which we can govern ourselves in peace and dignity and honor and security, but instead are our national refuge for our incompetents who have failed at every other occupation by means of which they might make a living for themselves and their families; and which as a result we would have to feed and clothe and shelter out of our own private purses and means. — Faulkner, The Mansion Read more →
Just Like Santa
The eyes of the Lord are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good. — Proverbs 15:3 Read more →