Mind and money

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
Upton Sinclair

Hard stuff

Imagine how much harder physics would be if electrons had feelings!
– Richard Feynman, speaking at a Caltech graduation ceremony
(end quote)
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1003/1003.2688v3.pdf

Hanging on - hanging in

“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

Profit

Ludwig von Mises: "Profit is a product of the mind, of success in anticipating the future state of the market. It is a spiritual and intellectual phenomenon." - Planning for Freedom

A truth rarely known

" I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America. "-- Alexis de Tocqueville, 1805 -- 1859, French political thinker and author of Democracy in America

Power of the evil

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke

Evil exports

Ludwig von Mises: "It may be safely taken for granted that up to now the natives have learned only evil ways from the Europeans, and not good ones. This is not the fault of the natives, but rather of their European conquerors, who have taught them nothing but evil. They have brought arms and engines of destruction of all kinds to the colonies; they have sent out their worst and most brutal individuals as officials and officers; at the point of the sword they have set up a colonial rule that in its sanguinary cruelty rivals the despotic system of the Bolsheviks." - Liberalism