We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.
“[T]he whole of economics can be reduced to a single lesson, and that lesson can be reduced to a single sentence. The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.”
I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.
I ask no favors for my sex. I surrender not our claim to equality. All I ask of our brethren is, that they will take their feet from off our necks, and permit us to stand upright on that ground which God designed us to occupy.
The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another.
Every man is guilty of all the good he didn’t do.
Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.
Democracy is direct self-government, over all the people, for all the people, by all the people.
Political necessities sometimes turn out to be political mistakes.
The laws of Mahomet have prohibited loan at interest; and what is the consequence in the Mussulman dominions? Money is lent at interest, but the lender must be indemnified for the use of his capital, and, moreover, for the risk incurred in the contravention of the law.