I don’t fear Donald Trump, and I don’t fear the policies he is talking about. What I fear is the extremist interpretation of Islam that is spilling blood on the streets of our world, from Orlando to Dhaka to Brussels.
Asra Nomani, CNN, November 11, 2016.
The monopolist . . . never has unlimited control; he merely has the choice within the laws of price of different “economically possible” price levels. He can select that price at which the combination of profit for each article, and the number of articles to be sold at that price, are likely to promise the greatest total profit, but he cannot exert his “power” in any other way than in conformity with the laws of price, for it is his behavior that establishes the “price law,” namely the conditions of the amount offered at a given price level, but never can he counteract the laws of price.
Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, “Control or Economic Law,” Zeitschrift für Volkswirtshaft, Sozialpolitik und Verwaltung, Volume XXIII (1914): 205–71; John Richard Mez, Ph.D., translator.
Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room.
U.S. President Merkin Muffley, as performed by actor Peter Sellers in the (fictional) black comedy Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb (1964), a film directed by Stanley Kubrick and written by Kubrick, Terry Southern, and Peter George, based on the book Red Alert by Peter George, first published in the UK in 1958 as Two Hours to Doom under the pseudonym Peter Bryant.
[T]here is one . . . thing that not even the most imposing dictate of power will accomplish: It can never effect anything in contradiction to the economic laws of value, price, and distribution; it must always be in conformity with these; it cannot invalidate them; it can merely confirm and fulfill them.
Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, “Control or Economic Law,” Zeitschrift für Volkswirtshaft, Sozialpolitik und Verwaltung, Volume XXIII (1914): 205–71; John Richard Mez, Ph.D., translator.
Hello? . . . Uh . . . Hello, D- uh, hello, Dmitri? Listen, uh, uh, I can’t hear too well. Do you suppose you could turn the music down just a little? . . . Oh-ho, that’s much better . . . yeah . . . huh . . . yes . . . Fine, I can hear you now, Dmitri . . . Clear and plain and coming through fine . . . I’m coming through fine, too, eh? . . . Good, then . . . well, then, as you say, we’re both coming through fine . . . Good . . . Well, it’s good that you’re fine and . . . and I’m fine . . . I agree with you, it’s great to be fine . . . a-ha-ha-ha-ha . . . Now then, Dmitri, you know how we’ve always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the Bomb . . . The Bomb, Dmitri . . . The hydrogen bomb! . . . Well now, what happened is . . . ahm . . . one of our base commanders, he had a sort of . . . well, he went a little funny in the head . . . you know . . . just a little . . . funny. And, ah . . . he went and did a silly thing . . . Well, I’ll tell you what he did. He ordered his planes . . . to attack your country . . . Ah . . . Well, let me finish, Dmitri . . . Let me finish, Dmitri . . . Well listen, how do you think I feel about it? . . . Can you imagine how I feel about it, Dmitri? . . . Why do you think I’m calling you? Just to say hello? . . . Of course I like to speak to you! . . . Of course I like to say hello! . . . Not now, but anytime, Dmitri. I’m just calling up to tell you something terrible has happened . . . It’s a friendly call. Of course it’s a friendly call . . . Listen, if it wasn’t friendly . . . you probably wouldn’t have even got it . . . They will not reach their targets for at least another hour . . . I am . . . I am positive, Dmitri . . . Listen, I’ve been all over this with your ambassador. It is not a trick . . . Well, I’ll tell you. We’d like to give your air staff a complete run-down on the targets, the flight plans, and the defensive systems of the planes . . . Yes! I mean i-i-i-if we’re unable to recall the planes, then . . . I’d say that, ah . . . well, ah . . . we’re just gonna have to help you destroy them, Dmitri . . . I know they’re our boys . . . All right, well listen now. Who should we call? . . . Who should we call, Dmitri? The . . . wha-whe, the People . . . you, sorry, you faded away there . . . The People’s Central Air Defense Headquarters . . . Where is that, Dmitri? . . . In Omsk . . . Right . . . Yes . . . Oh, you’ll call them first, will you? . . . Uh-huh . . . Listen, do you happen to have the phone number on you, Dmitri? . . . Whe-ah, what? I see, just ask for Omsk information . . . Ah-ah-eh-uhm-hm . . . I’m sorry, too, Dmitri . . . I’m very sorry . . . All right, you’re sorrier than I am, but I am as sorry as well . . . I am as sorry as you are, Dmitri! Don’t say that you’re more sorry than I am, because I’m capable of being just as sorry as you are . . . So we’re both sorry, all right? . . . All right.
U.S. President Merkin Muffley on the phone to Soviet Premiere Dmitri Kissoff, a monologue performed by actor Peter Sellers in the (fictional) black comedy Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb (1964), a film directed by Stanley Kubrick and written by Kubrick, Terry Southern, and Peter George, based on the book Red Alert by Peter George, first published in the UK in 1958 as Two Hours to Doom under the pseudonym Peter Bryant.
[T]hrift is never popular. . . . If parliaments have historically been the guardians of thrift, they now have turned much rather into its sworn enemies. Nowadays, the political and national parties — maybe not exclusively in our own country, but certainly also here — tend to develop a certain covetousness, almost considered to be dutiful, for all kinds of benefits for their own electorate at the expense of the general public.
Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, as quoted by Ludwig von Mises, “The Economist Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk” (Neue Freie Presse, Vienna, August 27, 1924) — described by Mises as “the last words that Böhm-Bawerk addressed to Austria’s financial authorities.”
Although there exist many thousand subjects for elegant conversation, there are persons who cannot meet a cripple without talking about feet.
Ernest Bramah, The Wallet of Kai Lung, “The Transmutation of Ling” (1900)
Utility is often summarily stigmatized as an immoral doctrine by giving it the name of Expediency, and taking advantage of the popular use of that term to contrast it with Principle. But the Expedient, in the sense in which it is opposed to the Right, generally means that which is expedient for the particular interest of the agent himself: as when a minister sacrifices the interest of his country to keep himself in place. When it means anything better than this, it means that which is expedient for some immediate object, some temporary purpose, but which violates a rule whose observance is expedient in a much higher degree. The Expedient, in this sense, instead of being the same thing with the useful, is a branch of the hurtful.
John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1879), Chapter II, “What Utilitarianism Is.”
“We were all ranked together at the valuation. Men and women, old and young, married and single, were ranked with horses, sheep, and swine. There were horses and men, cattle and women, pigs and children, all holding the same rank in the scale of being, and were all subjected to the same narrow examination. Silvery-headed age and sprightly youth, maids and matrons, had to undergo the same indelicate inspection. At this moment, I saw more clearly than ever the brutalizing effects of slavery upon both slave and slaveholder.”
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, 1845
Better a dish of husks to the accompaniment of a muted lute than to be satiated with stewed shark’s fin and rich spiced wine of which the cost is frequently mentioned by the provider.
Ernest Bramah, Kai Lung Beneath the Mulberry Tree, “The Story of the Poet Lao Ping, Chun Shin’s Daughter Fa, and the Fighting Crickets” (1940)