the ladybug and the lion

Quotes I Like.

It may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation. They may manage it then, and what proceeds from it, as they please, during their usufruct. They are masters too of their own persons, and consequently may govern them as they please. But persons and property make the sum of the objects of government. The constitution and the laws of their predecessors extinguished them, in their natural course, with those whose will gave them being. This could preserve that being till it ceased to be itself, and no longer. Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19. years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force and not of right.

—Thomas Jefferson

Quotes I Like.

We have moved to the PhD standard from the gold standard.

—James Grant

Quotes I Like.

True nobility isn't about being better than anyone else; it's about being better than you used to be.

—Portia De Rossi

Quotes I Like.

The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.

—Joan Robinson

Quotes I Like.

Until women are as ambitious as men, they’re not going to achieve as much as men.

—Sheryl Sandberg

Full interview with her and Zuckerberg at TechCrunch. 

Quotes I Like.

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas.

—John Maynard Keynes

Quotes I Like.

My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.

—Warren Buffet

In today's NYT.

Quotes I Like.

Critics say America is a lie because its reality falls so far short of its ideals. They are wrong. America is not a lie; it is a disappointment. But it can only be a disappointment because it is also a hope.

—Samuel P. Huntington

Quotes I Like.

It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.

—David Hume

Quotes I Like.

If you want to build a ship don't herd people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

—Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Wisdom of the Sands