It is so difficult to mix with artists! You must choose business men to talk to, because artists only talk of money.
Jean Sibelius, as quoted by Bengt de Törne in Sibelius: A Close-Up (1937), p. 94.
Le temps est un grand maître, dit-on; le malheur
est qu’il soit un maître inhumain qui tue ses élèves.
Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.
Hector Berlioz, letter written in November 1856, published in Pierre Citron (ed.) Correspondance générale (1989), vol. 5, p. 390; as quoted by Paul Davies in About Time: Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution (1996), p. 214.
If we understood the world, we would realize that there is a logic of harmony underlying its manifold apparent dissonances.
Jean Sibelius, as quoted in Henry Thomas & Dana Lee Thomas, Living Biographies of Great Composers (1946) p. 309.
Les grandes personnes ne comprennent jamais
rien toutes seules, et c’est fatigant, pour les enfants,
de toujours et toujours leur donner des explications.
Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.
Antoine de Saint Exupéry, Le Petit Prince (1943), first chapter.
Riches I hold in light esteem,
And Love I laugh to scorn;
And lust of fame was but a dream,
That vanished with the morn:And if I pray, the only prayer
That moves my lips for me
Is, ‘Leave the heart that now I bear,
And give me liberty!’Yes, as my swift days near their goal,
Emily Brontë, “The Old Stoic,” from Clement King Shorter, editor, The Complete Poems of Emily Brontë (1908).
’Tis all that I implore;
In life and death a chainless soul,
With courage to endure.
It is not the astronomer’s business to consider whether it would be better if the sun were nearer or farther from the earth, or if he turned round her, instead of turning round him. Nor is it the chemist’s business to consider whether carbonic acid and carbonic oxide are noxious gases that ought not to exist. It has never been thought desirable to make Newton responsible for tiles falling on the people’s heads.
Yves Guyot, The Principles of Social Economy (1892). Caricature by André Gill (1845–1885).
Economists, however, are held answerable for the laws which they discover.
Pour intervenir utilement dans l’industrie, il faudrait
que le législateur possédât les connaissances nécessaires.
To intervene usefully in industry, the legislator would need to possess the necessary knowledge.
Jean Gustave Courcelle-Seneuil (December 22, 1813 – June 29, 1892), Protection et libre-échange (1879).
Think about what you just did to Gen Z. . . . You just flat-out told them that men could become women magically. . . . You have now in a weird way inoculated them against your own bullshit by giving them something so ridiculous and obviously wrong that they now understand that it doesn’t matter how punished you’ll [sic] be for departing from the mainstream consensus — that the mainstream consensus is at least sometimes just total crap.
Brett Weinstein, segment from his Dark Horse podcast (“9/11: Does Gen Z Believe the Official Narrative?” 12/01/2025), in conversation with his wife Heather Heying.
Le sacrifice que l’on fait en employant une chose à un usage plutôt qu’à un autre, c’est le sacrifice de l’utilité qu’on aurait pu retirer de cet autre usage.
Ainsi, quand on emploie un capital à construire une maison d’habitation, on renonce à l’intérêt qu’il aurait rapporté s’il avait été placé en valeurs publiques ou prêté à intérêt; quand on emploie un terrain à la rente qu’on aurait pu en tirer en le louant ou en le cultivant autrement.
Le vrai coût d’une chose, par conséquent, ce n’est pas seulement le travail qu’elle a exigé, c’est encore tout ce à quoi on a renoncé pour l’obtenir.
Jean Gustave Courcelle-Seneuil (December 22, 1813 – June 29, 1892), Traité théorique et pratique d’économie politique (1858, volume I, chapter VIII, § 144–145). Here the eminent diplomat and economist presented the powerful concept known over a decade later in Austrian literature as “opportunitätskosten” and more than half a century before it became common in English as “opportunity cost.”
Progress is in inverse ratio to the coercive action of man on man, in direct ratio to his command over things. The Protectionist, by trying to prevent his countrymen from consuming what they choose, wishes to remove them from the effects of all external progress, and when he gains his ends he may indeed find the most extravagant conceptions of Swift pale before the irony of his creation.
Yves Guyot, The Comedy of Protection, 1906, viii.