“There is no reason why a man who has made a distinctive contribution to economic science should be omnicompetent on all problems of society — as the press tends to treat him till in the end he may himself be persuaded to believe.”
F. A. Hayek, speech at the Nobel Banquet, December 10, 1974.
“Students of social science, must fear popular approval: Evil is with them when all men speak well of them.”
Alfred Marshall, as quoted by F. A. Hayek, speech at the Nobel Banquet, December 10, 1974.
“[T]he Nobel Prize confers on an individual an authority which in economics no man ought to possess.
“This does not matter in the natural sciences. Here the influence exercised by an individual is chiefly an influence on his fellow experts; and they will soon cut him down to size if he exceeds his competence.
“But the influence of the economist that mainly matters is an influence over laymen: politicians, journalists, civil servants and the public generally.”
F. A. Hayek, speech at the Nobel Banquet, December 10, 1974.
“A legislature is always badly set to work in manufacturing crime. To risk money in a wager is not a crime per se, whether the wager be on the result of a race, on the fate of a lottery ticket, on the turn of a dicebox, or on any other like contingency. It is folly, perhaps, in all cases, and it becomes crime and madness in some; but to draw the line between allowable folly and criminality, in a matter of this kind, is rather the office of publick opinion, than of the law.”
William Leggett, in an editorial in the Plaindealer, January 28, 1837, republished in A Collection of the Political Writings of William Leggett (1840), and titled “Gambling Laws.”
“Progress is a new season and the rule of progress is everything in its season.”
Henry Ford, May 15, 1923.
“Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without asking a clear question.”
“A pestilence isn’t a thing made to man’s measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn’t always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanists first of all, because they haven’t taken their precautions.”
Albert Camus, The Plague (1947).
“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”
“One test of the correctness of educational procedure is the happiness of the child.”
“Has any citizen, rich or poor, the least idea of the amount which he annually pays for the support of the government? The thing is impossible. No arithmetician, not even Babbit with his calculating machine, could compute the sum. He pays a tax on every article of clothing he wears, on every morsel of food he eats, on the fuel that warms him in winter, on the light which cheers his home in the evening, on the implements of his industry, on the amusements which recreate his leisure. There is scarcely an article produced by human labour or ingenuity which does not bear a tax for the support of one of the three governments under which every individual lives.”
William Leggett, in an editorial in the Evening Post, April 22, 1834 (republished in A Collection of the Political Writings of William Leggett (1840), and titled “Direct Taxation”).