When things come falling apart

"Improbable things happen; and probable things fail to happen."


-- Howard Marks, chairman of Oaktree, at Grant’s Fall 2009 Investment Conference

Verdade e verdades

Irving Kristol

Main article: Irving Kristol

"There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people. There are truths appropriate for children; truths that are appropriate for students; truths that are appropriate for educated adults; and truths that are appropriate for highly educated adults, and the notion that there should be one set of truths available to everyone is a modern democratic fallacy. It doesn't work."^[5][7]

Education

H. L. Mencken:

The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues, and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else…Their purpose, in brief, is to make docile and patriotic citizens, to pile up majorities, and to make John Doe and Richard Doe as nearly alike, in their everyday reactions and ways of thinking, as possible.

The fate of the State

"...for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword." (Matt. 26:52)

The price of liberty

"God hath vouchsafed man liberty only on condition of eternal vigilance; which condition if he break it, servitude is the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt."
John Curran, Irish statesman

Jim Rogers' advice to his daughter

- Conduct your own research and trust your own judgment.
- Focus on what you yourself love.
- Be persistent.
- Broaden your horizons and see as much of the world as you can.
- The most important thing you can learn is how to think and question everything you hear.
- Study and learn from history.
- Master more than one language – and make sure one of them is Mandarin.
- Don't panic.
- Take care of yourself and don't neglect the sunscreen.
- Remember that boys need girls more than girls need boys.

Jim Rogers:
A Gift to My Children: A Father's Lessons for Life and Investing

The art of speculation

“Opportunities are always there, but the opportunist is lacking.”
-- Dickson Watts, Speculation as a Fine Art and Thoughts on Life

Tu ne cede malis

Ludwig von Mises: "How one carries on in the face of unavoidable catastrophe is a matter of temperament. In high school, as was custom, I had chosen a verse by Virgil to be my motto: Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito. Do not give in to evil, but proceed ever more boldly against it. I recalled these words during the darkest hours of the war. Again and again I had met with situations from which rational deliberation found no means of escape; but then the unexpected intervened, and with it came salvation. I would not lose courage even now. I wanted to do everything an economist could do. I would not tire in saying what I knew to be true." - Notes and Recollections