Author: Redactor

“Therefore the sight that is granted to your world penetrates within the Eternal Justice as the eye into the sea; for though from the shore it sees the bottom, in the open sea it does not, and yet the bottom is there but the depth conceals it.”

Però ne la giustizia sempiterna
la vista che riceve il vostro mondo,
com’ occhio per lo mare, entro s’interna;
che, ben che da la proda veggia il fondo,
in pelago nol vede; e nondimeno
èli, ma cela lui l’esser profondo.

Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, Canto XIX, lines 58-63.

A leader is best when people barely know that he exists,
not so good when people obey and acclaim him,
worst when they despise him.
Fail to honor people,
They fail to honor you.
But of a good leader, who talks little,
when his work is done, his aims fulfilled,
they will all say,
‘We did this ourselves.’

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, chapter 17

“The greatest gift that God in His bounty made in creation, and the most conformable to His goodness, and that which He prizes the most, was the freedom of will, with which the creatures with intelligence, they all and they alone, were and are endowed.”

Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, Canto V, lines 19-24

We throw all our attention on the utterly idle question whether A has done as well as B, when the only question is whether A has done as well as he could.

William Graham Sumner, “The New Social Creed,” Earth-Hunger and Other Essays, p. 210 (1913).

“ man who started with the notion that the world owed him a living would once more find, as he does now, that the world pays him its debt in the state prison.”

William Graham Sumner, “The Challenge of Facts” (1914)

“It is better to risk sparing a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.”

Voltaire, Zadig (1747)

“The history of civil liberty is made up of campaigns against abuses of taxation. Protectionism is the great modern abuse of taxation; the abuse of taxation which is adapted to a republican form of government. Protectionism is now corrupting our political institutions just as slavery used to do.”

William Graham Sumner, “Protectionism: the -ism which teaches that waste makes wealth” (1888)

“Clever tyrants are never punished.”

Voltaire, Mérope, act V, scene V (1743)