Quotes about making
page 89

Fred Thompson photo
Richard Ford photo

“You can get carried away with how things were once, and not how you need to make them better.”

Richard Ford (1944) American novelist and short story writer

Source: Wildlife (1990), p. 171

Theresa May photo
Gregory of Nyssa photo
Gerhard Richter photo
Henry Hazlitt photo

“Let us begin with the simplest illustration possible: let us, emulating Bastiat, choose a broken pane of glass.A young hoodlum, say, heaves a brick through the window of a baker’s shop. The shopkeeper runs out furious, but the boy is gone. A crowd gathers, and begins to stare with quiet satisfaction at the gaping hole in the window and the shattered glass over the bread and pies. After a while the crowd feels the need for philosophic reflection. And several of its members are almost certain to remind each other or the baker that, after all, the misfortune has its bright side. It will make business for some glazier. As they begin to think of this they elaborate upon it. How much does a new plate glass window cost? Fifty dollars? That will be quite a sum. After all, if windows were never broken, what would happen to the glass business? Then, of course, the thing is endless. The glazier will have $50 more to spend with other merchants, and these in turn will have $50 more to spend with still other merchants, and so ad infinitum. The smashed window will go on providing money and employment in ever-widening circles. The logical conclusion from all this would be, if the crowd drew it, that the little hoodlum who threw the brick, far from being a public menace, was a public benefactor.Now let us take another look. The crowd is at least right in its first conclusion. This little act of vandalism will in the first instance mean more business for some glazier. The glazier will be no more unhappy to learn of the incident than an undertaker to learn of a death. But the shopkeeper will be out $50 that he was planning to spend for a new suit. Because he has had to replace a window, he will have to go without the suit (or some equivalent need or luxury). Instead of having a window and $50 he now has merely a window. Or, as he was planning to buy the suit that very afternoon, instead of having both a window and a suit he must be content with the window and no suit. If we think of him as a part of the community, the community has lost a new suit that might otherwise have come into being, and is just that much poorer.The glazier’s gain of business, in short, is merely the tailor’s loss of business. No new “employment” has been added. The people in the crowd were thinking only of two parties to the transaction, the baker and the glazier. They had forgotten the potential third party involved, the tailor. They forgot him precisely because he will not now enter the scene. They will see the new window in the next day or two. They will never see the extra suit, precisely because it will never be made. They see only what is immediately visible to the eye.”

Economics in One Lesson (1946), The Broken Window (ch. 2)

Donald J. Trump photo
Ernest Dimnet photo
George Eliot photo

“Inclination snatches arguments
To make indulgence seem judicious choice.”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

Book 1
The Spanish Gypsy (1868)

José Martí photo

“It is necessary to make virtue fashionable.”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

Martí : Thoughts/Pensamientos (1994)

Alex Salmond photo
Dean Ornish photo
Jared Polis photo

“Rep. Jared Polis of Colorado has announced the birth of a new son, making him the only openly gay member of Congress to be a parent.”

Jared Polis (1975) American entrepreneur, philanthropist, and US Representative

[Gay congressman announces birth of new son, Associated Press, December 1, 2011, Houston Chronicle]
About

Girolamo Gigli photo

“Heaven is always ready to shut its eyes to our sins when they are not committed before the eyes of the world, and when the lack of witnesses makes it impossible to bring the charge home to us.”

Girolamo Gigli (1660–1722) Italian dramaturge

Il cielo chiude volentieri gli occhi a nostri difetti, quando non son fatti avanti gli occhi del mondo, e quando per mancanza di testimoni non possa compire perfettamente il processo contra di noi.
Il Don Pilone (1711), Act III., Sc. V. — (Don Pilone.)
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 312.

Raymond Poincaré photo
Clarence Thomas photo

“It's fascinating that people, there's so many people now who will make judgments based on what you look like. I'm black, so I'm supposed to think a certain way? I'm supposed to have certain opinions? I don't do that. You don't create a box and put people in and then make a lot of generalizations about them.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Interview with Steve Kroft https://web.archive.org/web/20140611214639/http://www.cbsnews.com/news/clarence-thomas-the-justice-nobody-knows/ (September 2007).
2000s

Pierre Monteux photo

“Now that was very impressive. But before you try to impress the ladies in the balcony, make sure the horns come in.”

Pierre Monteux (1875–1964) French conductor

Quoted from Freedland, M. André Previn. Century, 1991. p97
To a student conductor.

Richard Salter Storrs photo
John Dryden photo

“p>The inherent contradictions and binds men find themselves in in trying to become less macho in their relationship with a woman were poignantly expressed in a letter written by a young man to a New York newspaper in response to an article that addressed itself to a question posed by a woman writer—whether women would be able to think of a non-macho man as sexy. The letter writer wrote:I am by nature a gentle and non-aggressive 27-year-old man who often finds women turned off sexually by my tenderness and non-macho view of the world. I have come to realize that for all their talk, a lot of women still want the hairy, sexy, war-mongering, aggressive machoman of their dreams. So after several fruitless years as a gentle poet-man, I now turn myself into a heavy machismo when I go out with a woman. It works. I open the doors, I order the food and drinks, I decide which movie or play we will see. I keep my shirt unbuttoned down past my nipples and wear a gold chain around my neck with a carved elephant tusk medallion, and if the relationship is not working out, I make the first move and tell my companion that I'm sorry but we're through.The sad thing about all this is that it works.”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

After all those years of being naturally sensitive and gentle, and now I've got to turn myself inside out just to appear sexy. It's fun and it's nice, but I do wish I could just be myself again.</p></blockquote>
Who Is the Victim? Who Is the Oppressor?, pp. 165&ndash;166
The New Male (1979)

Neil Simon photo

“Take care of him. And make him feel important. And if you can do that, you'll have a happy and wonderful marriage…Like two out of every ten couples.”

Neil Simon (1927–2018) playwright, writer, academic

Mother, in Barefoot in the Park (1963); cited from The Collected Plays of Neil Simon (New York: New American Library, 1986) vol. 1, p. 207

Joseph Heller photo
Warren Farrell photo

“The more the father is involved, the more easily the child makes open, receptive, and trusting contact with new people in its life.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 34.

“Wilson's analytical theory assumed that the natural and inevitable tendency in any system of government is to have recourse to some sovereign body that will exercise "ultimate supremacy" and have the last say in making collective decisions. It is in this sense that we speak of a government as have a monopoly over the legitimate exercise of authority and use of force in society. Indeed, much of contemporary political science is based on this presumption.”

Vincent Ostrom (1919–2012) American academic, educator and political scientist

Vincent Ostrom (2008), The Intellectual Crisis in American Public Administration, p. 87; Cited in: " Vincent Ostrom on Woodrow Wilson and Political Monism http://discoursesonliberty.blogspot.nl/2012/04/vincent-ostrom-on-woodrow-wilson-and.html" at discoursesonliberty.blogspot.nl, 2012/04

Thornton Wilder photo
Ebenezer Howard photo

“All, then, are agreed on the pressing nature of this problem, all are bent on its solution, and though it would doubtless be quite Utopian to expect a similar agreement as to the value of any remedy that may be proposed, it is at least of immense importance that, on a subject thus universally regarded as of supreme importance, we have such a consensus of opinion at the outset. This will be the more remarkable and the more hopeful sign when it is shown, as I believe will be conclusively shown in this work, that the answer to this, one of the most pressing questions of the day, makes of comparatively easy solution many other problems which have hitherto taxed the ingenuity of the greatest thinkers and reformers of our time. Yes, the key to the problem how to restore the people to the land — that beautiful land of ours, with its canopy of sky, the air that blows upon it, the sun that warms it, the rain and dew that moisten it — the very embodiment of Divine love for man — is indeed a Master-Key, for it is the key to a portal through which, even when scarce ajar, will be seen to pour a flood of light on the problems of intemperance, of excessive toil, of restless anxiety, of grinding poverty — the true limits of Governmental interference, ay, and even the relations of man to the Supreme Power.”

Ebenezer Howard (1850–1928) British writer, founder of the garden city movement

Introduction.
Garden Cities of To-morrow (1898)

P. W. Botha photo

“We are a strong country in a rather sick world. … Our problems are not so much racial as radicals wish to make them.”

P. W. Botha (1916–2006) South African prime minister

As Prime Minister in a Business Week interview, USA, 4 April 1982, as cited in the Sunday Express, and Pieter-Dirk Uys, 1987, PW Botha in his own words, p. 15, 41

“New England is about right. And the Pacific Coast would make a nice, other Italy. But as for the rest of the country, I honestly don't know what to do with it. Do you?”

Bertrand Collins (1893–1964)

[Militancy Avoided, https://www.newspapers.com/image/106297158/, December 22, 2016, Oakland Tribune, August 26, 1934]

Hillary Clinton photo

“We have to be cognizant of the fact that they've had foreign fighters coming to volunteer for them, foreign money, foreign weapons, so we have to make this the top priority.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)

Anna Sui photo
E.E. Cummings photo
Daniel Dennett photo
Jodie Marsh photo

“Most men – not just the men in Brentwood – are scared of powerful women with brains. There’s something in a man that makes him want to have power over a woman – whether it’s in the bedroom or because they earn more money. It boosts their egos.”

Jodie Marsh (1978) English glamour model and television personality

Interview in The Metro http://www.metro.co.uk/showbiz/interviews/39209-60-seconds-jodie-marsh#ixzz1o9GF3Az0, undated.

Robert Silverberg photo
Michael Oakeshott photo
Merlin Mann photo

“If you want to make a chili, you're going to break some cows.”

Merlin Mann (1966) American blogger

"Roderick On The Line" podcast, October 2011
Podcasts, Other podcasts

William H. McNeill photo
Frederick Douglass photo
Warren Farrell photo
Geoffrey Moore photo
Oliver Wendell Holmes photo
George Chapman photo
Nisargadatta Maharaj photo
H.L. Mencken photo
George Eliot photo
Louis C.K. photo
Margaret Cho photo
Peter Wentz photo
Andrew Vachss photo
Cory Doctorow photo

“It is a mistake to let aesthetics drive your rational decision making.”

Cory Doctorow (1971) Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author

"Pwned: How copyright turns us all into IP serfs", UNC iBiblio (22 February 2007) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkBX-981_es

Phil Ochs photo
Swami Vivekananda photo
Sister Nivedita photo
Milan Kundera photo

“No act is of itself either good or bad. Only its place in the order of things makes it good or bad.”

Žádné pocínání není samo o sobe dohré ani zlé. Teprve jeho místo v rádu ciní je dobrým ci zlým.
The Joke (1967)

Don Marquis photo
Charles Evans Hughes photo

“The power of administrative bodies to make finding of fact which may be treated as conclusive, if there is evidence both ways, is a power of enormous consequence. An unscrupulous administrator might be tempted to say "Let me find the facts for the people of my country, and I care little who lays down the general principles."”

Charles Evans Hughes (1862–1948) American judge

"Important Work of Uncle Sam's Lawyers", American Bar Association Journal (April 1931), p. 238, reprinting an address to the Federal Bar Association, Washington, D.C. (February 11, 1931), where the chief justice spoke of the "extraordinary development of administrative agencies of the government and of the lawyer's part in making them work satisfactorily and also in protecting the public against bureaucratic excesses", according to the article's subtitle

Saddam Hussein photo
Daniel Abraham photo
Catherine the Great photo

“I will live to make myself not feared.”

Catherine the Great (1729–1796) Empress of Russia

As quoted in The Historians' History of the World (1904) by Henry Smith Williams, p. 423

Averroes photo
Kodo Sawaki photo

“The honours system gets to grade people. Graded grains make finer rice.”

Richard Mottram (1946) British civil ervant

April 2004, explaining to the Commons committee on public administration why there are so many different levels of honours Hoggart, Simon. 'Sir Humphrey reveals his Dusty Springfield side' http://politics.guardian.co.uk/redbox/comment/0,9408,1206669,00.html, The Guardian (30 April 2004).

Julian of Norwich photo
Clive Staples Lewis photo
David Frawley photo
Dan Coats photo
Gertrude Stein photo
Cesare Borgia photo

“This is what I wanted to tell Monsignor di Volterra [Soderini] when he came to Urbino, but I could not entrust him with the secret. Now that my opportunity has come, I have known very well how to make use of it, and I have done a great service to your masters.”

Cesare Borgia (1475–1507) Duke of Romagna and former Catholic cardinal

Cesare to Macchiavelli, after telling him why he ordered his men to attack the soldiers of Vitelli and Orsini (December, 1502) as quoted by Rafael Sabatini, 'The Life of Cesare Borgia', Chapter XVII: The Beautiful Stratagem

Richard Arkwright photo

“Mr. Arkwright, after many years intense and painful application, invented, about the year 1768, his present method of spinning cotton, but upon very different principles from any invention that had gone before it. He was himself a native of Lancashire; but having so recently witnessed the ungenerous treatment of poor Hargrave, by the people of that county, he retired to Nottingham, and obtained a patent in the year 1769, for making cotton, flax, and wool into yarn. But, after some experience, finding that the common method of preparing the materials for spinning (which is essentially necessary to the perfection of good yarn) was very imperfect, tedious, and expensive, he turned his thoughts towards the construction of engines for that purpose; and, in the pursuit, spent several years of intense study and labour, and at last produced an invention for carding and preparing the materials, founded in some measure on the principles of his first machine. These inventions, united, completed his great original plan. But his last machines being very complicated, and containing some things materially different in their construction, and some others materially different in their use, from the inventions for which his first patent was obtained, be procured a patent for these also in December, 1775.”

Richard Arkwright (1732–1792) textile entrepreneur; developer of the cotton mill

Source: The Case of Mr. Richard Arkwright and Co., 1781, p. 23

Maurice Strong photo

“Our concepts of ballot-box democracy may need to be modified to produce strong governments capable of making difficult decisions.”

Maurice Strong (1929–2015) Canadian businessman

Source: "Facing Down Armageddon: Environment at a Crossroads," essay by Maurice Strong in World Policy Journal, Summer, 2009 "Successful management of today's traumatic processes of change will not be easy to achieve. Our concepts of ballot-box democracy may need to be modified to produce strong governments capable of making difficult decisions, particularly in terms of safeguarding the global environment that this transition will require and whose results are often not immediately apparent."

Holden Karnofsky photo
Martti Ahtisaari photo

“I think it's a disgrace for the international community that we have allowed so many conflicts to become frozen, and we are not making a serious effort to solve them.”

Martti Ahtisaari (1937) Finnish politician and former President of Finland

Telephone interview with Adam Smith, Editor-in-Chief of Nobelprize.org (10 October 2008) http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2008/ahtisaari-telephone.html

Richard Feynman photo

“In general, we look for a new law by the following process: First we guess it. Then we – now don't laugh, that's really true. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what, if this is right, if this law that we guessed is right, to see what it would imply. And then we compare the computation results to nature, or we say compare to experiment or experience, compare it directly with observations to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment, it's wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn't make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesn't make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is. If it disagrees with experiment, it's wrong. That's all there is to it.”

same passage in transcript: video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2NnquxdWFk&t=16m46s
The Character of Physical Law (1965)
Variant: In general we look for a new law by the following process. First we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience, compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is – if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. That is all there is to it.

Richard Steele photo

“Age in a virtuous person, of either sex, carries in it an authority which makes it preferable to all the pleasures of youth.”

Richard Steele (1672–1729) British politician

No. 153 (25 August 1711)
The Spectator (1711-1714)

Jerry Goldsmith photo
Tomas Kalnoky photo
Bob Rae photo

“As I grow older, I have had to discard some ideas and policies because they no longer make sense. This strikes me as entirely healthy. I would invite others to do the same.”

Bob Rae (1948) Canadian politician

Preface, p. ix
The Three Questions - Prosperity and the Public Good (1998)

Noam Chomsky photo

“In order to make it look dramatic, they staged what was ridiculed by some Israeli commentators, correctly, they staged a national trauma… There was a huge media extravaganza, you know, pictures of a little Jewish boy try to hold back the soldiers destroying his house… And a lot of the settlers were allowed in, so there could be a pretense of violence, though there wasn't any… The withdrawal could have been done perfectly quietly. All that was necessary was for Israel to announce that on August 1st the army will withdraw. And immediately the settlers, who had been subsidized to go there in the first place, and to stay there, would get on to the trucks that are provided for them and move over to the West Bank where they can move into new subsidized settlements. But if you did that way, there wouldn't have been any national trauma, any justification for saying, "never can we give up another 1 mm² of land". What made all of this even more ridiculous was that it was a repetition of what was described in Haaretz as "Operation National Truama 1982". After Israel finally agreed to Sadat's 1971 offer, they had to evacuate northeastern Sinai, and there was another staged trauma, which again was ridiculed by Israel commentators. By a miracle, none of the settlers who were resisting needed a Band-Aid, while Palestinians were being killed all over the place.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Talk titled "The Current Crisis in the Middle East" at MIT, September 21, 2006 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/403/
Quotes 2000s, 2006

Mark Zuckerberg photo

“My goal was never to make Facebook cool.”

Mark Zuckerberg (1984) American internet entrepreneur

Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg First Public Q&A ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFhBLWU9LyU, YouTube, 6 November 2014
Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg: Why I wear the same T-shirt every day http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/11217273/Facebooks-Mark-Zuckerberg-Why-I-wear-the-same-T-shirt-every-day.html, The Telegraph, 7 November 2014

Omar Khayyám photo
Morrissey photo
Joseph Strutt photo
Robert Jeffress photo
Paul Dini photo

“Our existence in this world seems insignificant within the extent of space and of time. Therefore, nonreligious people have to come to terms with living in a world full of uncertainty and unknowns. Nevertheless, many people prefer facing the uncertainty, rather than believing in a certainty that makes no sense to them.”

Mordechai Ben-Ari (1948) Israeli computer scientist

Source: Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (2005), Chapter 8, “Science and Religion: Scientists Just Do Science” (pp. 136-137; minor grammatical errors corrected silently)

Winston S. Churchill photo
Franklin D. Roosevelt photo
Slash (musician) photo