Men are not fed on money. They do not clothe themselves with gold, or warm themselves with silver. What does it matter whether there is more or less money in the country if there is more bread on our sideboards, more meat in our larders, more linen in our wardrobes, more firewood in our cellars?
To level and equalize the conditions of labor is not simply to cramp exchanges in certain branches of trade; it is to attack exchange in its principle, for its principle rests upon that very diversity, upon those very inequalities of fertility, aptitude, climate and temperature, that you desire to efface.
In a state of isolation, our wants exceed our powers; in consequence of Exchange, our powers exceed our wants.
Is Law to enforce rigorous Justice, or to be the instrument of Spoliation, organized with more or less adroitness?
Frédéric Bastiat, The Law (1850).
The first qualification for a historian is to have no ability to invent.
Life is too short, and the time we waste in yawning never can be regained.
The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.
In comparison to the French Revolution, the American Revolution has come to seem a parochial and rather dull event. This, despite the fact that the American Revolution was successful–realizing the purposes of the revolutionaries and establishing a durable political regime–while the French Revolution was a resounding failure, devouring its own children and leading to an imperial despotism, followed by an eventual restoration of the monarchy.
Food is a product of supply and demand, so try to figure out where the supplies are fresh, the suppliers are creative, and the demanders are informed.
The right wing will be identified with the monied class, even when the left often has more money. And the left wing will be identified as the whiners, even though the right at times whines as much or more. You might say that both sides are monied, high human capital whiners, on the whole.