Category: Thought

The United States is broke — fiscally, morally, intellectually — and the Fed has incited a global currency war (Japan just signed up, the Brazilians and Chinese are angry, and the German-dominated euro zone is crumbling) that will soon overwhelm it. When the latest bubble pops, there will be nothing to stop the collapse. If this sounds like advice to get out of the markets and hide out in cash, it is.

David Stockman, as quoted by Joe Weisenthal, “David Stockman Writes Huge Unhinged Screed About How America Is Doomed And How You Should Get Out Of The Market NOW,” Business Insider (March 13,2013).

It is manifest that, to banish bad sentiments born of oppression and insolence, it is necessary that laws be equal for everyone, and even for everyplace.

Destutt de Tracy, as quoted by Mme. Victor de Tracy, Death Notice on Destutt de Tracy (translated by Iris Hartman, 1852)

Political liberty . . . has not only a meaning of abstention, but a meaning of participation. If in one sense it is a sheer negative, and a doctrine of rights, in another sense it is thoroughly positive, and a gospel of duties.

John Morley, Voltaire (London: Macmillan and Company, 1885; 1897), p. 80.

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Too far a retreat from reality is insanity.

Poul Anderson, Brain Wave (1954), Chapter 10.

Even good opinions are worth very little unless we hold them in the broad, intelligent, and spacious way.

John Morley, author of Voltaire and other works.

The trouble with men is that they have limited minds. That’s the trouble
with women, too.

Joanna Russ, “Existence” (1975).

Decency is not news; it is buried in the obituaries — but it is a force stronger than crime.

Robert A. Heinlein, “This I Believe” (1952)

We fight that others may enjoy; and many generations struggle and debate, that one generation may hold something for proven.

John Morley, Voltaire (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1897), p. 26.

You can’t believe what a lovely planet we have until you see her from outside.

Robert A. Heinlein, Have Space Suit—Will Travel (1958)

It is of less important in youth what a man learns than how he learns it.

C. F. W. Jacobs, Vermischte Schriften, iii, § 27, p. 254 — as quoted by John Fiske, Darwinism and Other Essays (1879).