When someone removes a cancer, what do you replace it with?
Economist Tom Sowell, in conversation with Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institution’s Uncommon Knowledge, upon being asked what would be established to replace the Federal Reserve.
Cum dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum.
Love the sinner and hate the sin.
Augustine of Hippo, Opera Omnia, Vol II. Col. 962, letter 211.
Lex naturae … nihil aliud est nisi lumen intellectis insitum nobis a Deo, per quod cognoscimus quid agendum et quid vitandum. Hoc lumen et hanc legem dedit Deus homini in creatione.
The law of nature … is nothing other than the light of the intellect planted in us by God, by which we know what should be done and what should be avoided. God gave us this light or law in creation.
Thomas Aquinas, On the Ten Commandments (c. 1273).
Quid est ergo tempus? Si nemo ex me quaerat, scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio.
What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.
Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, XI, 14 (c. 397).
Frustra fit per plura, quod potest fieri per pauciora.
It is pointless to do with more what can be done with fewer.
William of Ockham (c. 1287 – 1347) — he of “Occam’s Razor,” one of its expressions here presented — in Summa Totius Logicae, i. 12.
Nullum malum bona intentione factum excusatur.
No evil can be excused because it is done with a good intention.
Thomas Aquinas, On the Ten Commandments (c. 1273).
Logic is the most useful tool of all the arts. Without it no science can be fully known.
William of Ockham (c. 1287 – 1347) — he of “Occam’s Razor” — in Summa Logicae (c. 1323).
We will not dwell on JUSTICE JACKSON’s argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself. We observe only this: JUSTICE JACKSON decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett on Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s argument in Trump v. CASA (June 27, 2025), as quoted by Jonathan H. Adler, Volokh Conspiracy (June 27, 2025).
It is unworthy of a profound intellect to see in mediocrity itself an objection. It is, indeed, a necessity of human existence, for only in the presence of a horde of average men is the exceptional man a possibility. . . .
Friedrich W. Nietzsche, as quoted and translated by H.L. Mencken, The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1913), from The Antichrist (Der Antichrist, § 57).
Man’s achievements rest upon the use of symbols. . . . we must consider ourselves as a symbolic, semantic class of life, and those who rule the symbols, rule us.
Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity (1933).