Edmund Burke The balance between consumption and production makes price. The market settles, and alone can settle, that price. Market is the meeting and conference of the consumer and producer, when they mutually discover each other’s wants. Nobody, I believe, has observed with any reflection what market is, without being astonished at the truth, the correctness, the celerity, the general equity, with which the balance of wants is settled. They who wish the destruction of that balance, and would fain by arbitrary regulation decree, that defective production should not be compensated by increased price, directly lay their axe to the root of production itself. +
Friedrich Nietzsche The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently. +
Fulton J. Sheen Communism is the final logic of the dehumanization of man. +
Benjamin Franklin Whatever is begun in anger, ends in shame. +
Homer If you serve too many masters, you'll soon suffer. +
Plato One which is the next best, and has the advantage of compelling the citizens to look to their characters:—Let there be a general rule that every one shall enter into voluntary contracts at his own risk, and there will be less of this scandalous money-making, and the evils of which we were speaking will be greatly lessened in the State. Yes, they will be greatly lessened. At present the governors, induced by the motives which I have named, treat their subjects badly; while they and their adherents, especially the young men of the governing class, are habituated to lead a life of luxury and idleness both of body and mind; they do nothing, and are incapable of resisting either pleasure or pain. Very true. They themselves care only for making money, and are as indifferent as the pauper to the cultivation of virtue. Yes, +
Cicero Love is the attempt to form a friendship inspired by beauty. +
Socrates There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance. +
Dwight D. Eisenhower Leadership consists of nothing but taking responsibility for everything that goes wrong and giving your subordinates credit for everything that goes well. +
Cicero It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment. +
Mark Twain If Christ were here there is one thing he would not be—a Christian. +
Abraham Lincoln Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power. +
Marlene Dietrich I do not think we have a "right" to happiness. If happiness happens, say thanks. +
Thomas Jefferson Everything predicted by the enemies of banks, in the beginning, is now coming to pass. We are to be ruined now by the deluge of bank paper. It is cruel that such revolutions in private fortunes should be at the mercy of avaricious adventurers, who, instead of employing their capital, if any they have, in manufactures, commerce, and other useful pursuits, make it an instrument to burden all the interchanges of property with their swindling profits, profits which are the price of no useful industry of theirs. +
Albert Einstein The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it. +
Albert Einstein Any fool can know. The point is to understand. +
Hegel It is easier to discover a deficiency in individuals, in states, and in Providence, than to see their real import and value. +
Friedrich A. Hayek planning and competition can be combined only by planning for competition but not by planning against competition. +
Socrates Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. +
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Divide and rule, the politician cries; Unite and lead, is watchword of the wise. +
Bias of Priene All men are wicked +
Hegel Man is an animal, but even in his animal functions, he is not confined to the implicit, as the animal is; he becomes conscious of them, recognizes them, and lifts them, as, for instance, the process of digestion, into self-conscious science. In this way man breaks the barrier of his implicit and immediate character, so that precisely because he knows that he is an animal, he ceases to be an animal and attains knowledge of himself as spirit. +
George Washington It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one. +
René Descartes Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power. +
Carl Sagan Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another. +
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe There is no art in turning a goddess into a witch, a virgin into a whore, but the opposite operation, to give dignity to what has been scorned, to make the degraded desirable, that calls for art or for character. +
Cicero Everything is indefinite, misty, and transient; only virtue is clear, and it cannot be destroyed by any force. +
Napoleon Bonaparte The extent of your consciousness is limited only by your ability to love and to embrace with your love the space around you, and all it contains. +
Bruce Lee To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion, to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never. +
Norman Bethune Medicine, as we are practicing it, is a luxury trade. We are selling bread at the price of jewels... Let us take the profit, the private economic profit, out of medicine, and purify our profession of rapacious individualism... Let us say to the people not, 'How much have you got, but how best can we serve you? +
Alfred Lord Tennyson “Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all. +
Blaise Pascal In a word, the Self has two qualities: it is unjust in itself since it makes itself the centre of everything; it is inconvenient to others since it would enslave them; for each self is the enemy, and would like to be the tyrant of all others. You take away its inconvenience, but not its injustice, and so you do not render it lovable to those who hate injustice; you render it lovable only to the unjust, who do not any longer find in it an enemy. And thus you remain unjust, and can please only the unjust +
Friedrich Nietzsche Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed. +
Stephen Spielberg The past may dictate who we are, but we get to determine what we become. +
Adam Smith It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion. +
Bias of Priene Do not praise an undeserving man because of his riches. +
Epictetus An ignorant person is inclined to blame others for his own misfortune. To blame oneself is proof of progress. But the wise man never has to blame another or himself. +
Jean-Jacques Rousseau A taste for ostentation is rarely associated in the same souls with a taste for honesty +
Abraham Lincoln When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion. +
Friedrich A. Hayek The chief difference [between totalitarian and free countries] is that only the totalitarians appear clearly to know how they want to achieve that result, while the free world has only its past achievements to show, being by its very nature unable to offer any detailed "plan" for further growth. +
Seneca you shall be told what pleased me to-day in the writings of Hecato; it is these words: "What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself." That was indeed a great benefit; such a person can never be alone. You may be sure that such a man is a friend to all mankind. +
Epictetus Any person capable of angering you becomes your master; he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him. +
Arthur C. Clarke Civilization and Religion are incompatible and Faith is believing what you know isn't true. +
Friedrich Nietzsche Those who have a why to live can bear almost any how. +
Thomas Jefferson Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another? +
Hannah Arendt The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist. +
Marshall McLuhan A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding. +
Seneca Reason shows us there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. +
Friedrich Nietzsche You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist. +
Kurt Vonnegut How nice - to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive. +