And that's the problem with most philanthropy-- there's no measurement system. You give somebody some money to do something and most of the time you can really never measure whether you failed or succeeded in your judgment of that person or his ideas or their implementation. So if you can't succeed or fail, it's really hard to get better.Source: Steve Jobs, Unsourced
Most of the time, we're taking things. Neither you nor I made the clothes we wear; we don't make the food or grow the foods we eat; we use a language that was developed by other people; we use another society's mathematics. Very rarely do we get a chance to put something back into that pool. I think we have that opportunity now. And no, we don't know where it will lead. We just know there's something much bigger than any of us here.Source: Steve Jobs, 1985 Playboy Interview
You know, I know something about totalitarianism. I have been a totalitarian ruler. And I hate to admit, it was a great job while it lasted.Source: Eduard Shevardnadze, Former Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union and former President of the Republic of Georgia
Intel can thrive today and never hire another American. It is not our desire, not is not our intention, but we can do that.Source: Craig Barrett, Intel CEO
Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.Source: John Lehman, former US Secretary of the Navy
Where we once thought ourselves collectively strong, we now regard ourselves as individually entitled.Source: Strauss and Howe, The Fourth Turning, 1997, pg 1
...the mark of the prophet is to speak the truth in love with courage - come what may.Source: Cornel West, The American evasion of philosophy: a genealogy of pragmatism, 1989
Is there a primitive religion that can match 'environmentalism' for attributing natural calamity to the transgressions of man?Source: Charls Krauthammer, Jan 22nd, 1996; Environmentalists Testing The Limits Of Our Credulity Chicago Tribune
As taxpayer or draftee, every Iraqi is implicated in his government’s defense just as every American is drawn into the U.S. government’s attack. Thus, the war becomes a war of all Americans against all Iraqis, i.e., total war.Source: Hans-Herman Hoppe
... in our system of profit and loss, we cannot possibly think that the government should bail the banks out of bad loans they made, but allow them to keep the profits on the good ones.Source: Milton Friedman (Unsourced)
We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because the lie is more comfortable.Source: Alexander Solzhenitsyn (unsourced)
...don't regard yourself as a guardian of freedom unless you respect and preserve the rights of people you disagree with...
All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities.Source: Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune, Missionaria Protectiva, Text QIV (decto) (1985)
... I came to realize that traditions which are disruptive and harmful tend to disappear, whether through voluntary change, or more tragically, by the disappearance of societies that act in accordance with them. Presumably, then, if a tradition has survived, it has some positive value, even if we cannot see it. It is a "fatal conceit" to call into question everything for which good and sufficient reason cannot be immediately given. How else can we justify the "blindly obedient" practice of wearing ties and collars, for example?Source: Walter Block, Libertarianism and Libertinism
It would be a far, far better world if no one engaged in prostitution, not because there were legal sanctions imposed against it, but because people did not wish to so debase themselves.Source: Walter Block, Libertarianism and Libertinism
Historically, the most terrible things—war, genocide, and slavery—have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.Source: Howard Zinn, 1990, Declarations Of Independence Cross-Examining American Ideology, pg 104
All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities.Source: Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse Dune, Missionaria Protectiva, pg 59, 1987
More than any other factor, inflation discredits the authority of the older generation and turns power over to youth. It is not simply a matter of the old losing their economic advantage over the young. In an inflationary environment, all the normal virtues of the old suddenly start to work against them, while all the normal vices of the young suddenly seem to look like wisdom.Source: Paul A Cantor, Hyperinflation and Hyperreality, 1994
One may say that, apart from wars and revolutions, there is nothing in our modern civilizations which compares in importance to [inflation]. The upheavals caused by inflations [sic] are so profound that people prefer to hush them up and conceal them.Source: Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power, 1984
