“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” - Isaac Newton
“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” - Isaac Newton
“I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies but not the madness of people.” - Isaac Newton
“Nature is pleased with simplicity. And nature is no dummy” - Isaac Newton
“What we know is a drop, what we don't know is an ocean.” - Isaac Newton
“Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.” - Isaac Newton
“Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who sets the planets in motion.” - Isaac Newton
“Truth is ever to be found in the simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.” - Isaac Newton
“No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess.” - Isaac Newton
“This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being...
This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont, to be called Lord God παντοκρατωρ or Universal Ruler.” - Isaac Newton
“A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true.” - Sir Isaac Newton
“If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.” - Charles Darwin
“A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.” - Charles Darwin
“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.” - Charles Darwin
“Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” - Charles Darwin
“If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.” - Charles Darwin
“We stopped looking for monsters under our bed when we realized that they were inside us.” - Charles Darwin
“The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man.” - Charles Darwin
“I am not apt to follow blindly the lead of other men” - Charles Darwin
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives,
not the most intelligent that survives.
It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” - Charles Darwin
“...Whilst on board the Beagle I was quite orthodox, and I remember being heartily laughed at by several of the officers... for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority on some point of morality... But I had gradually come by this time, i.e., 1836 to 1839, to see that the Old Testament from its manifestly false history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, the rainbow at sign, &c., &c., and from its attributing to God the feelings of a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos, or the beliefs of any barbarian.
...By further reflecting that the clearest evidence would be requisite to make any sane man believe in the miracles by which Christianity is supported, (and that the more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do miracles become), that the men at that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost uncomprehensible by us, that the Gospels cannot be proved to have been written simultaneously with the events, that they differ in many important details, far too important, as it seemed to me, to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eyewitnesses; by such reflections as these, which I give not as having the least novelty or value, but as they influenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation. The fact that many false religions have spread over large portions of the earth like wild-fire had some weight with me. Beautiful as is the morality of the New Testament, it can be hardly denied that its perfection depends in part on the interpretation which we now put on metaphors and allegories.
But I was very unwilling to give up my belief... Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct. I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all of my friends, will be everlastingly punished.
And this is a damnable doctrine.” - Charles Darwin
“The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic.” - Charles Darwin
GREAT QUOTES OF FAMOUS ECONOMISTS GREAT QUOTES OF ADAM SMITH
“The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another. Avarice over-rates the difference between poverty and riches: ambition, that between a private and a public station: vain-glory, that between obscurity and extensive reputation. The person under the influence of any of those extravagant passions, is not only miserable in his actual situation, but is often disposed to disturb the peace of society, in order to arrive at that which he so foolishly admires. The slightest observation, however, might satisfy him, that, in all the ordinary situations of human life, a well-disposed mind may be equally calm, equally cheerful, and equally contented. Some of those situations may, no doubt, deserve to be preferred to others: but none of them can deserve to be pursued with that passionate ardour which drives us to violate the rules either of prudence or of justice; or to corrupt the future tranquillity of our minds, either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by remorse from the horror of our own injustice.” - Adam Smith
“Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.” - Adam Smith
“Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.” - Adam Smith
“The first thing you have to know is yourself. A man who knows himself can step outside himself and watch his own reactions like an observer.” - Adam Smith
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages” - Adam Smith
“Never complain of that of which it is at all times in your power to rid yourself.” - Adam Smith
“The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. ” - Adam Smith
“Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.” - Adam Smith
“No society can surely be flourishing and happy of which by far the greater part of the numbers are poor and miserable.” - Adam Smith
“In regards to the price of commodities, the rise of wages operates as simple interest does, the rise of profit operates like compound interest.
Our merchants and masters complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price and lessening the sale of goods. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.” - Adam Smith
“have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.” - Thomas Sowell
“When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.” - Thomas Sowell
“It’s amazing how much panic one honest man can spread among a multitude of hypocrites.” - Thomas Sowell
“People who pride themselves on their "complexity" and deride others for being "simplistic" should realize that the truth is often not very complicated. What gets complex is evading the truth.” - Thomas Sowell,
“The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.” - Thomas Sowell
“Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.” - Thomas Sowell
“The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.” - Thomas Sowell
“Intellect is not wisdom.” - Thomas Sowell
“Some of the biggest cases of mistaken identity are among intellectuals who have trouble remembering that they are not God.” - Thomas Sowell
“Racism does not have a good track record. It's been tried out for a long time and you'd think by now we'd want to put an end to it instead of putting it under new management.” - Thomas Sowell
“Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.” - Thomas Sowell
“There are only two ways of telling the complete truth--anonymously and posthumously.” - Thomas Sowell
“Socialism is a wonderful idea. It is only as a reality that it has been disastrous. Among people of every race, color, and creed, all around the world, socialism has led to hunger in countries that used to have surplus food to export.... Nevertheless, for many of those who deal primarily in ideas, socialism remains an attractive idea -- in fact, seductive. Its every failure is explained away as due to the inadequacies of particular leaders.” - Thomas Sowell
“When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?” - John Maynard Keynes
“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 influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist.” - John Maynard Keynes
“It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.” - John Maynard Keynes
“If you owe your bank a hundred pounds, you have a problem. But if you owe a million, it has.” - John Maynard Keynes
“Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.” - John Maynard Keynes
“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” - John Maynard Keynes
“The master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts .... He must be mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher—in some degree. He must understand symbols and speak in words. He must contemplate the particular, in terms of the general, and touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought. He must study the present in the light of the past for the purposes of the future. No part of man's nature or his institutions must be entirely outside his regard. He must be purposeful and disinterested in a simultaneous mood, as aloof and incorruptible as an artist, yet sometimes as near to earth as a politician.” - John Maynard Keynes
“The political problem of mankind is to combine three things: economic efficiency, social justice and individual liberty.” - John Maynard Keynes
“Words ought to be a little wild for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking.” - John Maynard Keynes
“The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.” - John Maynard Keynes
“Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.” - John Maynard Keynes
“From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time” - Friedrich August von Hayek
“Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion.” - Friedrich von Hayek
“The argument for liberty is not an argument against organization, which is one of the most powerful tools human reason can employ, but an argument against all exclusive, privileged, monopolistic organization, against the use of coercion to prevent others from doing better.” - Friedrich August von Hayek
“If socialists understood economics they wouldn't be socialists.” - Friedrich Hayek
“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine the can design.” - F. A. Hayek
“Probably it is true enough that the great majority are rarely capable of thinking independently, that on most questions they accept views which they find ready-made, and that they will be equally content if born or coaxed into one set of beliefs or another. In any society freedom of thought will probably be of direct significance only for a small minority. But this does not mean that anyone is competent, or ought to have power, to select those to whom this freedom is to be reserved. It certainly does not justify the presumption of any group of people to claim the right to determine what people ought to think or believe.” - Friedrich August von Hayek
“The more the state "plans" the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.” - Friedrich A. Hayek
“Our freedom of choice in a competitive society rests on the fact that, if one person refuses to satisfy our wishes, we can turn to another. But if we face a monopolist we are at his absolute mercy. And an authority directing the whole economic system of the country would be the most powerful monopolist conceivable…it would have complete power to decide what we are to be given and on what terms. It would not only decide what commodities and services were to be available and in what quantities; it would be able to direct their distributions between persons to any degree it liked.” - Friedrich August von Hayek
“It is true that the virtues which are less esteemed and practiced now--independence, self-reliance, and the willingness to bear risks, the readiness to back one's own conviction against a majority, and the willingness to voluntary cooperation with one's neighbors--are essentially those on which an individualist society rests. Collectivism has nothing to put in their place, and in so far as it already has destroyed then it has left a void filled by nothing but the demand for obedience and the compulsion of the individual to what is collectively decided to be good.” - Friedrich August von Hayek
“I am certain, however, that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.” - F.A. Hayek
“A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.” - Milton Friedman
“One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.” - Milton Friedman
“Well first of all, tell me: Is there some society you know that doesn’t run on greed? You think Russia doesn’t run on greed? You think China doesn’t run on greed? What is greed? Of course, none of us are greedy, it’s only the other fellow who’s greedy. The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn’t construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn’t revolutionize the automobile industry that way. In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you’re talking about, the only cases in recorded history, are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worse off, worst off, it’s exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear, that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by the free-enterprise system.” - Milton Friedman
“The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another.” - Milton Friedman
“Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.” - Milton Friedman
“Government has three primary functions. It should provide for military defense of the nation. It should enforce contracts between individuals. It should protect citizens from crimes against themselves or their property. When government-- in pursuit of good intentions tries to rearrange the economy, legislate morality, or help special interests, the cost come in inefficiency, lack of motivation, and loss of freedom. Government should be a referee, not an active player.” - Milton Friedman
“Now here's somebody who wants to smoke a marijuana cigarette. If he's caught, he goes to jail. Now is that moral? Is that proper? I think it's absolutely disgraceful that our government, supposed to be our government, should be in the position of converting people who are not harming others into criminals, of destroying their lives, putting them in jail. That's the issue to me. The economic issue comes in only for explaining why it has those effects. But the economic reasons are not the reasons” - Milton Friedman
“Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.” - Milton Friedman
“I am favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible.” - Milton Friedman
“Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.” - Milton Friedman