“The town’s lack of special quirks was almost a peculiarity in itself.”

Source: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Source: Trial by Fire (2014), Chapter 25 (p. 364)

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 68
Context: In the time of Jesus almost everybody worked in small shops or on the land and then sold or bartered their own products in the towns. There were no vast industrial centers, no great factories, no steam power or electricity. Everyone knew his neighbor by name. There was no highly developed division of labor, nor were there great extremes of wealth and poverty. Such economic conditions are ideal—or at least as nearly ideal as they can ever be—for the spread of Christian communism. And so they are still in many parts of Russia.

Variant: We do not place especial value on the possession of a virtue until we notice its total absence in our opponent.
Source: Human, All Too Human

Source: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

Elihu Thomas lays down principles for inventors, by Thomas, E., Electrical World 75 (1920), p. 1505.
Context: Shall an invention be patented or donated to the public freely? I have known some well-meaning scientific men … to look askance at the patenting of inventions, as if it were a rather selfish and ungracious act, essentially unworthy. The answer is very simple. Publish an invention freely, and it will almost surely die from lack of interest in its development. It will not be developed and the world will not be benefited. Patent it, and if valuable, it will be taken up and developed into a business.

Source: General System Theory (1968), 5. The Organism Considered as Physical System, p. 132

Source: Think Big (1996), p. 207

E 55
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook E (1775 - 1776)