Themes 4

  • “It is the Soldier, not the reporter who has given us the freedom of the press.  It is the Soldier, not the poet, who has given us the freedom of speech.  It is the Soldier, not the campus organizer, who gives us the freedom to demonstrate.  It is the Soldier who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag.” – Father Denis Edward O’Brien, Sergeant, USMC (1923 – 2002)
  • “These are not the droids you are looking for.” – Obi-Wan Kenobi
  • Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity.
  • Of all things, good sense is the most fairly distributed: everyone thinks he is so well supplied with it that even those who are the hardest to satisfy in every other respect never desire more of it than they already have. – René Descartes (Discours de la Méthode, 1637)
  • Three percent exceeds 2 percent by 50 percent, not by 1 percent. – Edward Denison
  • An “activist” is a vain, self-involved person who engages in activities designed to call attention to himself, under the guise of helping someone else.
  • Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so. – Douglas Adams
  • “Some ideas seem so plausible that they can fail nine times in a row and still be believed the tenth time.  Other ideas seem so implausible that they can succeed nine times in a row and still not be believed the tenth time.  Government controls in the economy are among the first kinds of ideas and the operation of a free market is among the second kinds of ideas.” – Thomas Sowell
  • “I examined my Liberalism and found it like an addiction to roulette.  Here, though the odds are plain, and the certainty of loss apparent to anyone with a knowledge of arithmetic, the addict, failing time and again, is convinced he yet is graced with the power to contravene natural laws.  The roulette addict, when he invariably comes to grief, does not examine either the nature of roulette, or of his delusion, but retires to develop a new system, and to scheme for more funds.” ― David Mamet, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture
  • The government can’t create resources.  It redistributes them.  For everyone who is given something, there is someone who has that something taken away. – Arthur Laffer, Wall Street Journal, 8 July, 2010
  • “There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as ‘moral indignation,’ which permits envy or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue.” – Erich Fromm
  • You can’t get rid of poverty by giving people money. – P.J. O’Rourke
  • ” … dependency doesn’t encourage gratitude but resentment.” – Peggy Noonan, WSJ 13 Aug., 2011
  • “You can’t make anything idiot proof because idiots are so ingenious.” – Ron Burns
  • Light travels faster than sound.  That is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
  • “However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.” – attributed to Winston Churchill
  • A meta-theorem in numerical linear algebra is that if your algorithm involves finding the inverse of a matrix then you need a better algorithm. – Douglas Bates
  • “I think it’s important, in reporting a development effort, to indicate what you tried that didn’t work, as well as what you tried that did work.” – Frederick Brooks, author of The Mythical Man-Month
  • Direction is more important than speed. – anonymous
  • “A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it […] gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want.  Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.” – Milton Friedman (1912 – 2006)
  • My choice early in life was either to be a piano-player in a whorehouse or a politician.  And to tell the truth, there’s hardly any difference. – Harry S. Truman
  • All models are wrong but some are useful. – George E. P. Box
  • Science is what you know.  Philosophy is what you don’t know. – Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
  • One had to be a Newton to notice that the moon is falling, when everyone sees that it doesn’t fall. – Paul Valéry (1871-1945)