Category: Thought

“[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”).

“Any man can learn anything he will, but no man can teach except to those who want to learn.”

Henry Ford, January 1, 1924

“There’s a field – a grand one for women – in politics, but women must . . . play politics as women and not as weak imitations of their ‘lords and masters.’ Men are all to inclined to ‘stuff’ a lady full of nonsense, treat her with not too much respect for her intellect and be far happier when she’s nicely tucked away in some corner where she can do them no harm — and herself no good. But it doesn’t have to be that way. . . . She has certain natural talents which men don’t have. Women are naturally given to detail. . . . If they weren’t, they couldn’t make pies or sew dresses. Men don’t like details. Because of woman’s training . . . she’s more thorough than man and right there she has a splendid opportunity for politics.”