Capitalism vs. socialism

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings;
the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery." - Winston Churchill

No such thing as a good state

"It was a war against an enemy of unspeakable evil. Hitler’s Germany was extending totalitarianism, racism, militarism, and overt aggressive warfare beyond what an already cynical world had experienced. And yet, did the governments conducting this war—England, the United States, the Soviet Union—represent something significantly different, so that their victory would be a blow to imperialism, racism, totalitarianism, militarism, in the world?"
http://libcom.org/history/world-war-ii-peoples-war-howard-zinn

On leadership

"A genuine leader is not a searcher of consensus but a molder of consensus." -- Martin Luther King

A cure against the depression that wasn't applied

“Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate. It will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people.”
Andrew W. Mellon

War is a racket

"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes." - General Smedley Butler

The enemy within

“Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.” - George Washington

Blowback

“How far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?” - Dwight D. Eisenhower

The honor of the State

“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.” - Voltaire

Omne ens scibile

"The study of philosophy is conducted along two lines, one concerned with action, the other with pure thought—hence they may be called practical and speculative philosophy, the former dealing with the conduct of life and the establishment of moral standards, the latter concerned with the theory of causation and the nature of absolute truth. Socrates is the type of excellence in practical wisdom, while Pythagoras concentrated on the contemplative, for which he was equipped by his intellectual power."
—Augustine, City of God, VIII, c . 4.

Fall from the low

„Der wahre Weg geht über ein Seil, das nicht in der Höhe gespannt ist, sondern knapp über dem Boden. Es scheint mehr bestimmt stolpern zu machen, als begangen zu werden.“ Franz Kafka

Knowing the limits of knowledge is true knowledge

Friedrich A. Hayek (1988, 76):
"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little
they really know about what they imagine they can design."

How nations fall by unsound money

“Nations are not ruined by one act of violence, but gradually and in an almost imperceptible manner by the depreciation of their circulating currency, through excessive quantity."
- Nicolaus Copernicus - 1525

The experts speak

"No one will need more than 637 kb of memory for a personal computer—640K ought to be enough for anybody," Bill Gates, Microsoft, 1981

Buy gold

"I would buy every three months some gold and not worry so much about the price because the weight stays the same." -Marc Faber