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)
Whoever undertakes to rule the kingdom and to shape it according to his whim — I foresee that he will fail to reach his goal. That is all.The kingdom is a living being. It cannot be constructed, in truth! He who tries to manipulate it will spoil it, he who tries to put it under his power will lose it.
Therefore: Some creatures go out in front, others follow, some have warm breath, others cold, some are strong, some weak, some attain abundance, other succumb.
The wise man will accordingly forswear excess, he will avoid arrogance and not overreach.
Lao Tzu, as quoted in the second of the Six Pamphlets of the “White Rose” Students.
A frog in a well cannot conceive of the ocean.
One who would influence the masses must have recourse to the art of advertisement. The clamour of puffery is to-day requisite even for an intellectual movement.
[A]ll Value resides in the mind. But people have come to regard Value as an absolute Quality inherent in Things: and the confusion of ideas is the source of bad reasoning. Value is founded on estimation.
Henry Dunning Macleod, Elements of Economics, Volume 1 (1881), p. 118. Relating the leading principles of Étienne Bonnot de Condillac’s Le commerce et le gouvernement, considérés relativement l’un à l’autre: Ouvrage élémentaire, Macleod explains the main idea of modern economics, mutual benefit in exchange:
Saki, The Unbearable Bassington, first page (1912).
When one’s friends and enemies agree on any particular point they are usually wrong.
Disagreement is manageable. It’s agreement that wreaks havoc. If people disagree, they’ll debate you. If they secretly agree with something, but are furious with you for saying it, then they’ll try to shut you up by any means necessary. As Tom Stoppard puts it, ‘I agree with every word you say, but I will fight to the death against your right to say it.’
The only people who object to escapism are jailers.
C. S. Lewis, as quoted by Arthur C. Clarke, God, The Universe and Everything Else (1988).
Humanity has gained its suit; Liberty will nevermore be without an asylum.
Lafayette, Letter to friends (1780), published in Memoirs de La Fayette, Vol. II, p. 50.
By far the most important of all the conditions, under which the production of material commodities goes broadly forward, is liberty of action on the part of the individual; because, wherever such liberty is conceded, association and invention and all other needful conditions follow right along by laws of natural sequence.
Arthur Latham Perry, Principles of Political Economy, 1891.