"There is no security on this Earth. There is only opportunity."
-MacArthur

"Thinking is the talking of the soul with itself."
-Plato

"I [was] asked if most politicians [had] serious and defining political beliefs. [I] thought for a moment and then said, 'Most of them started with philosophy. But they wound up with hunger.' "
-David Garth

"I think that people have a tendency to put too much faith in centralized planning, and they do not have sufficient regard for decentralized improvisation. The more ambiguity that exists in a situation--because of its novelty, uncertainty, and the absence of critical information--the more that it favors improvisation over planning.

My sense is that we live in an age where ambiguity is on the rise, because technology is changing rapidly and globalization has increased the speed at which opportunities and threats materialize. This suggests a relatively greater need for improvisation and adaptation, with somewhat less value in bureaucratic planning. Unfortunately, the planning illusion seems to cause many people to long for a government approach that is more centralized rather than less."
-Arnold Kling

"Town spending tends to be more effective than county spending. County spending tends to be more efficacious than state spending. State spending tends to be more constructive than federal spending. This is how life works. The area closest to where the buck came from is most likely to be more careful with the buck.

Money is power. More money for the federal government and used by the federal government is more power for the federal government."
-Peggy Noonan

"A universal peace [...] will never exist but in the imaginations of visionary philosophers, or in the breasts of benevolent enthusiasts."
-James Madison

"Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get."
-unknown

"...invention demands men with fanatic faith in their ideas, men willing to ignore the experts who say it cannot be done, men unafraid to butt heads with established authority..."
-Richard Stillerman

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."
-Friedrich A. Hayek

"Any difference that makes a difference is information."
-Gregory Bateson

"There are two kinds of freedom. One is "no-fault freedom," individual autonomy uncoupled from any larger purpose: freedom to choose, irrespective of the choice. This is the liberal definition of freedom, and it is the one that has taken over in the culture and been imposed on the country by the courts. Quite different is the conservative view of freedom, the liberty our Founders understood. This is freedom coupled with the responsibility to something bigger or higher than the self. True liberty is freedom in the service of virtue -- not the freedom to be as selfish as I want to be, or the freedom to be left alone, but the freedom to attend to one's duties -- duties to God, to family, and to neighbors."

-Rick Santorum

"Given the underground resistance to change...the new idea either finds a champion or dies."
-Donald A. Schon