Sunday, February 28, 2010

Money makes the world go round

1881: President James A. Garfield (The 20th President of the United States who lasted only 100 Days) states two weeks before he is assassinated: “Whoever controls the volume of money in our country is absolute master of all industry and commerceand when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.”

The value of money

"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value --- ZERO." - Voltaire (1694-1778)

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Limits of Science

Ludwig von Mises: "Science does not give us absolute and final certainty. It only gives us assurance within the limits of our mental abilities and the prevailing state of scientific thought. A scientific system is but one station in an endlessly progressing search for knowledge." - Human Action

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

The power of "no"

Years ago, somebody coined the aphorism, "'No' is a complete sentence." While some grammarians might disagree with that conclusion, "no" is incontrovertibly the most powerful word that a freedom-focused individual can utter – assuming, of course, that he has the fortitude to let it be his final answer.
William Norman Grigg

Without qualifiers

"Let your 'yes' be 'yes,' and your 'no' be 'no'; anything more than this comes from the evil one."
~ Jesus of Nazareth, as quoted in Matthew 5:37

Plutus

Plutus, the Greek god of wealth, did not have an easy life. As the myth goes, Plutus wanted to grant riches only to the "the just, the wise, the men of ordered life." Zeus blinded him out of jealousy of mankind (and envy of the good), leaving Plutus to indiscriminately distribute his favors.

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Schooling is not the same as education

Don’t let schooling interfere with your education.
~ Mark Twain

Friday, February 12, 2010

Stuck in ignorance

"I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives."
- Leo Tolstoy

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Secrets of legality and legitimacy

"When plunder has become a way of life for a group of people living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it, and a moral code that glorifies it." 
Frédéric Bastiat

Saturday, February 6, 2010

The State

Ludwig von Mises: "The worship of the state is the worship of force. There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men. The worst evils which mankind ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments." - Omnipotent Government

Truth against government

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Method of science

"There is no inductive method which could lead to the fundamental concepts of physics … in error are those theorists who believe that theory comes inductively from experience."
– Albert Einstein, The Method of Theoretical Physics, Oxford, 1933

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

The foolishness of revenge

"An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and soon the whole world is blind and toothless!" -- Mahatma Gandhi