"With the decline of the authority of Judeo-Christian values in the West, many people stopped looking to external sources of moral standards in order to decide what is right and wrong. Instead of being guided by God, the Bible and religion, great numbers ... have looked elsewhere for moral and social guidelines."
"For many millions today, those guidelines are feelings. With the ascendancy of leftist values that has followed the decline of Judeo-Christian religion, personal feelings have supplanted universal standards. In fact, feelings are the major unifying characteristic among contemporary liberal positions."
-Dennis Prager

"The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support."
-George Washington, letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport Rhode Island in response to their letter of welcome

"Late to bed, early to rise, work like hell, and advertise."
-Werner von Braun

"Hypomania, a genetically based mild form of mania, endows many of us with unusual energy, creativity, enthusiasm, and a propensity for taking risks. America has an extraordinarily high number of hypomanics -- grandiose types who leap on every wacky idea that occurs to them, utterly convinced it will change the world. Market bubbles and ill-considered messianic crusades can be the downside. But there is an enormous upside in terms of spectacular entrepreneurial zeal, drive for innovation, and material success. Americans may have a lot of crazy ideas, but some of them lead to brilliant inventions."
"Why is America so hypomanic? It is populated primarily by immigrants. This self-selection process is the boldest natural experiment ever conducted. Those who had the will, optimism, and daring to take the leap into the unknown have passed those traits on to their descendants."
-Amazon.com review of "The Hypomanic Edge : The Link Between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot of) Success in America" by John D. Gartner

Money

"Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value."
"Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except by the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more."
"And when men live by trade – with reason, not force, as their final arbiter – it is the best product that wins, the best performance, then man of best judgment and highest ability – and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money."

-Ayn Rand (Francisco's 'Money' Speech from "Atlas Shrugged")

"I’ve never thought evolution was in conflict with the idea of a Maker, but that’s just me; everyone tries to square the Mysteries of the Universe with the intellectual emotions that give them a sense of satisfaction and completeness, so if you come up with a cosmological model that feels satisfying, you should worry."
-James Lileks

"Liberalism, having lost its ability to advance by persuasion, increasingly relies on litigation. In its flight from arenas of representation, liberalism has used the judiciary as its legislature."
"Liberalism's unchanging agenda involves increased dependency on government in the name of equality."
-George F. Will, Washington Post, Friday, October 15, 2004

Optimist Am I

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD , "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."
-Jeremiah 29:11

"The more affluent we become, the less faith we place on scientific, reasoned approaches to our decisions. Those struggling every day to feed their children and stay alive, for example, must, of necessity, make decisions about what to eat based on evaluations balancing the benefits and risks. Only the well-to-do can afford the luxury of fretting over intangible concerns or moralizing about romantic ideals. Hence, Western developed nations are increasingly abandoning science-based assessments of risks. In their place is a growing "absolute safety at all costs" perspective that's been skillfully fueled by scares and misinformation from special interests."
-Sandy Szwarc

"Getting" the Blogosphere

"The lesson is that many heads are better than one. Distributed intelligence and distributed research trump presumed authority every time. Arguments from authority are no longer enough. "This is CNN" is no longer sufficient."
-Greg Scoble

Blogosphere

"So what hath the blogosphere wrought? The left blogosphere has moved the Democrats off to the left, and the right blogosphere has undermined the credibility of the Republicans' adversaries in Old Media. Both changes help Bush and the Republicans."
-Michael Barone

"Trade and economic interdependence by themselves reduce the risk of military conflict. By promoting capitalism, economic freedom, trade, and prosperity, we simultaneously promote peace."
-Erich Weede

"You and I are told we must choose between left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream -- the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order -- or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path."

-Ronald Reagan, October 27, 1964

"As a political philosophy, the belief that 'it is the job of government to widen the chance for development of individual personalities' is not merely lame and insulting, but dangerous. The endless widening and development of our personalities will require and legitimize the endless widening and development of our government. The threat goes beyond taxes, spending, borrowing and regulating that increase without limit. It culminates in a therapeutic nanny state that corrupts both its wardens and its wards. Convinced that they are intervening, constantly and pervasively, to assist the growth of people who would otherwise stagnate, the enlighteners don't need coercion to enfold the people in a soft totalitarianism. The objects of this therapy, meanwhile, may grow accustomed to it, and ultimately prefer being cared for to being free; or conclude that being free has no value apart from being cared for."
-William Voegeli, WSJ, 3 Feb 2005

"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."
-George Orwell

Luck

"Luck is an art...it comes to some people and just passes them by."
-Paul Newman

"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule."
-H.L. Mencken

"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience."
-Ram Dass

"The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time. The hand of force may destroy but cannot disjoin them."
-Thomas Jefferson.

Academia

"Many of those who attain educational distinction look askance at a world where college dropouts like Bill Gates are billionaires, where the most successful are not necessarily those who graduate summa cum laude. Used to constantly receiving recognition for being the smartest kids in the class, these academic over-achievers cannot countenance that the market rewards people according to the raw economic value they add to society, and not by exam results and scores from aptitude tests.

William F. Buckley was on the same track when he remarked that he'd rather be governed by the first 2000 people in the Cambridge phonebook than by the faculty of Harvard. Simply put, once a person gets so detached from regular society and finds that incentives and rewards don't work the same way on Main Street as they do in the ivory tower, he becomes resentful. This resentment, when combined with an unhealthy faith in the centralized control of philosopher kings, leads to voting behavior hostile to the spontaneous order of the free market."
-Ilya Shapiro