“An institution is likely to be more searchingly appraised if attention is focused at the outset upon its faults rather than its virtues.”

““[W]e consciously or unconsciously pay more attention to tuning our opinions to our neighbor’s pitch and preserving his approval than we do to examining the opinions searchingly and seeing to it that they are right and sound.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

“Not fault of teaching spider if little spider pay more attention to catching fly than doing lesson.”

Anne Bishop (1955) American fiction writer

“An antitechnological movement that focused on the elimination of capitalism would gain little in return for an enormous expenditure of energy. What is worse, by focusing on capitalism the movement would distract its own and other people's attention from the far more important objective of bringing down the technological system itself.”

Theodore Kaczynski (1942) American domestic terrorist, mathematician and anarchist

“They believe that the institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy, but that the promulgation of Abolition doctrines tends rather to increase than abate its evils.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

“The smaller the unit of government and the more restricted the functions assigned government, the less likely it is that its actions will reflect special interests rather than the general interest.”

Milton Friedman book Free to Choose

“Its like he knows he's better than you, but doesn't look down on you for it because he knows it's not your fault.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

“For what is more glorious than music, which modulates the heavenly system with its sonorous sweetness, and binds together with its virtue the concord of nature which is scattered everywhere?”
Quid enim illa praestantius, quae caeli machinam sonora dulcedine modulatur et naturae convenientiam ubique dispersam virtutis suae gratia comprehendit?

Cassiodorus Variae

“A tear that trembles for a little while
Upon the trembling eyelid, till the world
Wavers within its circle like a dream,
Holds more of meaning in its narrow orb
Than all the distant landscape that it blurs.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat